At State of the Union, Seattle held up as model for police reform
by David Kroman
President Barack Obama addresses
a joint session of U.S. Congress. Credit: Lawrence Jackson
When President Obama gives his
final State of the Union address tonight, a select group of people will join
his wife Michelle as a living illustration of his agenda during his final year
in office. The tilt will be toward social justice: a voice on criminal justice
reform, an advocate for homeless veterans, a Syrian refugee, an opioid reform
advocate, an empty seat for victims of gun violence.
Joining them will be Seattle
Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole, Obama’s choice as the face of federally driven
reform in a major city’s police department. Specifically, the Obama
administration has singled out O’Toole for her work with “community policing” —
i.e. walking the street more, attending meetings, getting to know community
members — and body cameras, which are meant to quickly answer questions
surrounding police interactions, and altercations, with people on the street.
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These tools, along with
Department of Justice investigations into the practices of police departments,
have been important parts of Obama’s answer to the deaths of young black men in
cities like Ferguson, Baltimore, Cleveland and others. Seattle is further along
this road than most, and success here would show that there’s hope for success
elsewhere.
But while O’Toole has won praise
in both Washingtons, her department is still very much in the thick of reform.
A seat near Michelle Obama tonight, some believe, may be a little premature.
When O’Toole arrived in Seattle in 2014, she
inherited a police department waist deep in federally mandated reforms. Those
reforms were spurred by a Justice department investigation that grew out of the
shooting of Native American woodcarver John T. Williams in 2010. SPD officer
Ian Birk shot Williams in the back when he refused to drop a knife he was
carrying — a tool of his trade. Williams was hard of hearing. The department
later paid Williams’ family $1.5 million after the shooting was ruled
unjustified.
That was before the police
killings of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray and Laquan McDonald — men
who are now household names across the country — put the issue in the national
spotlight.
Mayor Ed Murray hired O’Toole, a
former Boston Police Commissioner, specifically to oversee the reforms. Within
six months of her hiring, she replaced the department’s top brass with two
outsiders and a lieutenant. This, after 35 years of hiring from the rank of
Captain within the department. The Seattle Police Management Association, the
union representing captains and lieutenants, threatened an unfair labor
practice claim, but she managed to negotiate a deal to provide internal
leadership training and the claim was dropped.
Months later, O’Toole was the
only high-ranking public official to offer support to the concerns of the
Community Police Commission, the civilian component of the DOJ’s mandated
police reforms, regarding management of protests and demonstrations. This, for
many, was a sign that she recognized what was important to the people of
Seattle, not just the powers that be within her department.
And last August, O’Toole bucked
the opposition of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, the rank-and-file union,
and fired officer Cynthia Whitlach for her treatment of 67-year-old William
Wingate, an African American man the officer said swung a golf club at her.
(Dash-cam video shows otherwise. Whitlach, who made racially charged statements
on social media, claimed she was the victim of a sort of reverse racism.)
O’Toole specifically cited language regarding de-escalation and biased policing
that had been added to department guidelines since the beginning of Seattle’s
settlement agreement with the feds. It was a reminder that she was committed to
reform.
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Since O’Toole took over the
department, the DOJ’s police monitor, Merrick J. Bobb, has given her
increasingly positive reviews. Last June, he praised the SPD’s progress on
de-escalation training, data collection, crisis intervention and transparency.
In more recent reviews, he’s lauded members of the department for more
consistently reporting use of force to higher-ups.
“Especially given that, between
2009 and 2011, only 0.04 percent of cases received any significant chain of
command scrutiny whatsoever,” Bobb wrote, “it is a praiseworthy advance in
accountability that SPD … has become far more comfortable with critically
analyzing and scrutinizing officer use of force and holding officers
accountable for their performance during incidents involving force.”
During a stop on her six-city
“community policing” tour last September, Attorney General Loretta Lynch hailed
the Seattle Police Department’s efforts as a national example. Indeed, several
major cities, including New York, have sent delegations to Seattle to learn
from the city’s progress. SPD’s work regarding an early intervention system — a
data-driven approach to catch problems with officers before they balloon — is
being closely watched locally and nationally.
O’Toole is hard not to like. She’s got a
subtle Boston accent and seems to keep her chin up at all times, literally
holding her head high and back straight. A police chief’s got to eat a lot of
criticism and she eats it well. She knows many of the most vocal anti-police
voices in the city by name and addresses them as such. In the face of flurried
questions from the media, sometimes thinly veiled accusations, she never
flusters.
Even amid Lynch’s praise for the
city and department as a whole, it was O’Toole who seemed to get the most
glowing reviews, almost certainly a precursor to her invitation to D.C. today.
Still, O’Toole is not immune to
controversy. Community members criticized her for giving too light a punishment
to the officer who pepper sprayed a local high school teacher at a Black Lives
Matter demonstration last Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The police unions claim
she maintains an excess of captains while the department lacks for
rank-and-file officers. And there is still clearly tension surrounding the fact
that she went outside the department to hire her assistant chiefs.
O’Toole has also reportedly still
not moved her family to Seattle, renting a home here while maintaining a place
back in Boston. Some say it wouldn’t be a surprise if she were gone by next New
Year’s Eve.
In the end, though, it’s not
these things that worry community activists, but concern over what they see as
a premature celebration of what the department has accomplished. In November,
nearly 50 community groups, many of which were original signers on the first
letter asking the DOJ to intervene in Seattle, mounted something of a mutiny
against the police monitor and Federal Judge James Robart, who is overseeing
the reform, for not advancing legislation that would make some reforms permanent.
Both Robart and Bobb have
maintained that legislation codifying changes to the department ought to be
considered carefully and advanced, if necessary, slowly. Mayor Murray has
agreed. The result, say community advocates, is that O’Toole may be the only
thing holding the reforms together. Were she to leave, the progress could
crumble.
Among other concerns are whether
the department’s neighborhood-level, “micro-community policing plans” are
actually being put to use, and whether the city can realistically deploy body
cameras and answer questions of privacy at the same time. When Mayor Murray
introduced money for full deployment of body cameras in his budget, the results
of the department’s pilot program — which is specifically referenced in a statement
about O’Toole by the White House — were still being reviewed. They have still
not yet translated into broader policy.
Meanwhile, community groups
continue to say they haven’t gotten a fair hearing. During her visit to
Seattle, Attorney General Lynch told reporters she was hearing positive things
from the community about its relationship with the department. Members of the
Community Police Commission, however, say they never actually got the
opportunity to express their concerns to Lynch. “We need an honest discussion,”
said Reverend Aaron Williams, a CPC member. “This was a lot of patting on the
back.”
The department has made progress,
and O’Toole is mostly well-liked — these things are true. And the DOJ
intervention could very well lead to exactly the reform everyone hoped to see.
But the work is not done yet, and if Obama suggests in his speech tonight that
it is, some heads will shake in Seattle.
David Kroman
David Kroman is the city reporter
for Crosscut. A Bainbridge Island native, David has also worked as a teacher,
winery cellar hand, shellfish farmer and program director of a small
non-profit. His Twitter is @KromanDavid and his e-mail is
david.kroman@crosscut.com.
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