3,277 words

In our current post-George Floyd environment, all aspects of public safety and policing are up for re-
evaluation. In the call to "defund" the police, which is really a call to re-imagine public safety and set
narrow limits on what police officers can do, we must not forget that there will remain police who
abuse their power. For this reason we must also re-imagine what police accountability should look like,
and recognize that our current accountability system has failed us. This is a brief review of the current
and long term-failures of the Seattle Community Police Commission (CPC), often touted as the
backbone and pride of Seattle's police reform and accountability system.

As a result of the murder of John T. Williams by an SPD officer in 2010, dozens of local advocacy and
social services groups wrote to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) requesting an investigation of a
history of abuse, often motivated by racial bias, by Seattle police. The DOJ investigated the SPD,
resulting in a 2012 settlement agreement between the DOJ and Seattle and the beginning of the federal
court oversight of the SPD which continues today.

The Seattle Community Police Commission (CPC) was created as a result of the July 27, 2012
"Memorandum of Understanding Between the United States and the City of Seattle" (MOU) which
stated that the creation of such a commission would be "an important opportunity for Seattle’s diverse
communities to participate in the implementation of the MOU and certain aspects of the Settlement
Agreement, and to promote greater transparency and public understanding of the Seattle Police
Department." CPC commissioners were supposed to represent "the many and diverse communities in
Seattle, including members from each precinct of the city, police personnel, faith communities,
minority, ethnic, and other community organizations, and student or youth organizations." The latter
mentioned student and youth organizations have consistently been absent from the CPC for most of its
existence since it first started meeting in March of 2013.

The Seattle Community Police Commission: Avoidance of community and failure of leadership in
2020

In recent weeks the actions of the CPC have demonstrated their disconnection from, and fear of, the
community and transparency. The regular public CPC meetings of August 26, 2020 and September 2,
2020 are stunning demonstrations of this. On September 2nd the CPC decided to violate their own
policy of reading public comment (established on March 4, 2020) and retreat into an illegal non-public
"executive session" during a public online video meeting (in clear violation of the Washington Open
Public Meetings Act, see RCW 42.30.110 for a list of situations that would allow for an executive
session, none of which occurred). After coming out of executive session the CPC co-chairs explained
that no public comments would be read and that at some indefinite time in the future a new public
comments policy would be promulgated. Community attendees of the video conference asked
repeatedly (via chat) when the public comments would be read or responded to, with the CPC co-chairs
replying that it would depend on some future revised policy on public comment. Not one single
commissioner expressed dissent or unease at this abdication of the CPC's primary mission, nor
was any vote taken in public (nor were the results of any votes taken in executive session made
public, another illegal practice).

This recent behavior is shocking, but it is the longstanding behavior of the CPC that is more
worrisome: their failure to critique, or even publicly raise questions, about the 22 people killed by
the SPD since the CPC first began meeting in 2013 (with 27 killed by SPD since the SPD murder of
John T. Williams in 2010). At the August 26, 2020 CPC meeting the CPC claimed that requirements in
the federal consent decree and in Seattle law prevent them from commenting on specific cases. To
make a claim like this, post George Floyd, marks a profound failure of leadership and moral vision. It
is also a claim that is only partially true: the CPC has the legal mandate to investigate and comment on
patterns that are revealed in individual police abuse cases, such as the repeated pattern of the SPD
killing people with knives and rushing into situations in a manner that predetermines the use of deadly
force. In the most recent case of the May 19, 2020 SPD killing of Terry Caver the CPC had 93 days
during which they could have commented on this case without falling afoul of city law. Yet during this
time they did not even bother to find out his name or his story. As of today (September 7, 2020), 111
days since Caver's killing, the CPC remains silent on this killing. There is also the absurdity of the CPC
feeling compelled to stringently observe some legal requirements while entirely ignoring others (illegal
executive sessions, failure to hold required yearly community meetings, failure to uncover patterns in
SPD killings, etc.).

It is difficult to understand this behavior absent an understanding that this pattern is consistent with a
CPC culture of paternalism and defensiveness that has deepened over the last seven years.

At least since December of 2014, when I first started attending CPC meetings, the CPC has mostly
interacted with the public through listening sessions, city run or sponsored demographic advisory
groups, and social media posts -- all highly structured and with limited community participation. The
last CPC public meeting that allowed broad public input was January 24, 2015. On February 6, 2015
the CPC hosted a restricted listening session for the then new BLM protesters abused by police in the
prior months. For almost six years now the CPC has avoided public scrutiny, despite the legal
requirement (by federal court order and Seattle law) that they “convene an annual meeting to
receive public comments and present to the community highlights of CPC’s annual report.”

This disconnection from the community has created a body (the CPC) that sees itself as the arbiter for
community needs with the wisdom to discern what reforms can be publicly advocated for, taking it
upon themselves to determine what is achievable within the existing city power structure. This
behavior is, in part, due to the CPC having no real power and being reliant on having the ear of city
leaders and maintaining their goodwill.

Four Years of Hiding Failures in Police Accountability

Since December 2014 I have attended every public CPC meeting, except perhaps four to six meetings
during 2015. During this nearly six year period I have also engaged extensively with CPC staff and
commissioners, as will be apparent below.

In a May 11, 2016 meeting of the CPC, the SPD’s “Bias-Free Policing Training” received this review
by CPC members who had attended the training the day before: “CPC and SOCR [Seattle Office of
Civil Rights] expressed substantive concerns that they will share with SPD… asking SPD to not roll
out this training until the CPC can meet with SPD command staff to recommend changes to improve
it.” These were the politic comments for the meeting notes: in the actual meeting, which I attended, the
consensus was that the SPD bias-free training was itself an example of racial bias and extremely
problematic. In over four years since this incident there is no indication as to how, or if, this issue was
resolved, nor has it ever been brought up again at a public CPC meeting.
Also in May of 2016 the CPC voted to “To approve sending a letter to SPD requesting suspension of
the use of blast balls pending a public review,” due to serious injuries resulting from their use on May
1, 2016 as well as in previous years. Similar action was taken by the CPC in the spring of 2015 with
absolutely no consequence. The SPD current policy calls for the continued use of blast balls while
denying that they pose a significant risk to public safety. On June 15, 2020, more than five years after
the CPC first issued concerns about blast-balls, the Seattle City Council voted to ban them, and other
injurious crowd control devices, without any input from the CPC. During this five-year-plus period
the CPC failed to make public announcements or to rally a grassroots or legal response, a theme
we will see repeated in many instances of the CPC keeping threats to police reform or to the
public under wraps.

In March of 2016 I met with the then CPC director Fe Lopez to discuss with her the ways in which the
City had, and continues to, avoid timely public disclosure, most commonly by abusing the
“installment” method of releasing records: this is where the City responds to a public records request
by telling the requestor when the first installment will be ready without ever committing to the final
number of installments or to a date when the request will be completed. A year-and-a-half later, in
August 2017, the CPC formally signed on to a City Multi-Departmental Administrative Rule (MDAR
17-0002) that clearly spells out in Section 5.2.6 “the City may elect to provide records on an
installment basis to a requestor, whether individual or grouped... the PDO [Public Disclosure Officer]
should provide a reasonable estimate in the PDO's initial written response as to when the first
installment will be available.” The City MDAR that the CPC signed on to established the very
policies I had earlier warned would keep the records of police actions hidden. During that August
2017 CPC meeting there was no public discussion and no indication of discussions I had had with
Lopez. I was prevented from speaking at that meeting and no one present at that meeting expressed a
dissenting view. All this despite the federal court MOU (p. 7) requiring that the "SPD will work with
the Commission to overcome impediments to the release of information consistent with law and public
safety considerations."

On May 4th, 2017, at a public event on police reform at the University of Washington, Ian Warner
(legal counsel to then Seattle mayor Ed Murray) stated that the SPD has achieved important steps in
transparency through making SPD Use of Force (UOF) reports publicly available soon after incidents,
a claim that was reiterated by SPD's then Director of Transparency and Privacy Marry Perry. This was
an entirely false claim then and now: the only data publicly available online are lists of Use of Force
reports' report numbers, dates, etc. without any access to the actual report or its contents. This was
brought to the attention of the CPC in 2017, but the issue remains unresolved and unremarked upon in
over three years now.

During the late spring and through the summer of 2017 I emailed and met with CPC commissioners
and staff, in addition to speaking at CPC public meetings, concerning major flaws in the Office of
Police Accountability (OPA) investigative practices. My comments at the July 5, 2017 CPC regular
public meeting were entirely left out of the meeting notes, and none of my concerns were acted upon in
the ensuing three years. My repeated concerns expressed that summer (via emails, public comments,
and private meetings) about the misuse of blast-balls and the failure of the OPA to properly investigate
their misuse were also never acted upon or discussed in public meetings.

On September 11, 2018 I met with CPC staff and commissioners to discuss the highly biased policing
at an August 18, 2018 Seattle demonstration involving local right-wing hate groups (Patriot Prayer,
Proud Boys, and the Washington State Three Percenters) and counter-protesters. Despite the serious
concerns discussed and recognized by the CPC there was no public discussion or any apparent follow
up over the last two years -- especially concerning as recent events in Portland, Oregon highlight the
extreme dangers posed by policing shaped by political bias.

The above specific instances reflect a very limited sampling of how the CPC has often worked to
smooth over the rough edges of police reform, denying the community complete information, and
ignoring concerns that might contradict the air-brushed portrait. There are many other instances,
witnessed by myself and others, not included here.

The 2018 Police Union Contract: Undermining reform by contract and by SPD leadership

What happened during the Fall of 2018 is especially illuminating of both the general weaknesses of our
current accountability system, the failures in police reform, and how the CPC set itself up for failure.

On September 20, 2018 the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG, representing all ~1,300 Seattle police
officers below the rank of lieutenant) announced that its membership had voted overwhelmingly to
accept the contract agreed to in private (secrecy) by City negotiators at the end of August. This contract
had reversed numerous significant improvements in police accountability that were passed into law in
the spring of 2017. With much discomfort, the CPC ultimately opposed this contract and eventually
advocated for the city council to reject it.

On October 1, 2018 the mayor's office gave the CPC a copy of the SPOG contract. The CPC refused to
release the controversial contract to the public, even after a formal public disclosure request was made
to the CPC. After these refusals the CPC cited a claim from the Seattle City Attorney's Office, without a
basis in law, that the SPOG contract is exempt from public disclosure until it is formally presented to
the City council. On October 15, 2018 the police contract was first brought before the city council and
released to the public by the mayor's office. Despite the CPC's strenuous opposition to the contract,
they had illegally denied the public access to the document for two full weeks, seriously impeding
the public's ability to oppose it. As has been made clear from the CPC's prior failures of transparency,
this was done because of the false belief that they could negotiate with power and win, with no need for
community involvement.

SPD Command Staff Undermine and Slander the CPC -- CPC Fails to Defend Itself or the Public
Interest

On November 14, 2018, at a regular CPC meeting, the CPC discussed a November 5, 2018 "training
incident" (see page 4 of the CPC meeting notes) involving then SPD Deputy Chief Marc Garth Green,
who became second in command at SPD in August 2018 (though he was demoted in late 2019 for
reasons having nothing to do with this incident). This "training incident" took place eight days prior to
the city council voting in favor of the union contract, but after the CPC opposition to the contract
became public. When CPC staff, on November 5, 2018, were "auditing an Autism and Resiliency
training with SPD officers, CPC staff observed that an SPD Deputy Chief [Marc Garth Green] made
comments regarding the CPC, and a CPC Commissioner as it relates to the SPOG tentative Collective
Bargaining Agreement (CBA)." At the November 14, 2018 CPC meeting it was discussed that "The
remarks made to sworn officers [by Garth Green] are very concerning, and the CPC discussed how
to respond to SPD with concerns raised regarding professionalism and the undermining of the
entire accountability system" (emphasis added).
In later CPC meetings some commissioners reported on already feeling the repercussions of Garth
Green's hostile comments to SPD officers during the November 5th training. Then CPC commissioner
Lisa Daugaard, who had been singled out in Garth Green's remarks, felt that it threatened her work in
the law enforcement diversion program that she runs and that those remarks created a hostile
environment in working with officers, stating "officers and sergeants were told by a source or sources
that they believe I had said terrible things about them and the department and disrespected them and
their work. This has caused extreme risk for the diversion work my office does and this morning we
have to begin the process to repair that situation." At the November 14, 2018 CPC meeting other
commissioners reported on meetings with Chief Carmen Best and Garth Green during which
there was no indication of regret or plans for remedial action. You can listen to the CPC discussion
at that meeting, kept under wraps and referred to cryptically in meeting notes, here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=13bcG3GJdZ0Xore-7kB2g3xu8j7-ncOke .

The CPC went to great lengths to insure that the public would never know about this, once more under
the false belief that they could somehow still produce a palatable sausage without the public ever
having to witness how it was made.

The Original Sin: The CPC limiting which police reform models it considered in 2016-2017

In considering the new police accountability legislation, the Seattle City Council public safety
committee and the CPC studied and visited police reform programs in New York City, Los Angeles,
and New Orleans. Conspicuously absent from this short list: Newark, NJ, despite these folks visiting
New York City, which is less than six miles and a commuter train ride away from Newark. It is beyond
the scope of this overview to fully explore the differences in the approach to police reform between
Newark and Seattle, but there are two major differences that dramatically contrast with the Seattle
approach:

(1) Newark has a one-stop-shop approach to accountability, where instead of having a CPC –
without investigatory or subpoena powers – for community input and an OPA to investigate police
abuse, Newark has a single community police commission for both roles (making recommendations
and investigating police abuse with subpoena powers), and

(2) Newark has a fully civilianized police commission immunized from political interference: all
members of Newark’s police commission come from an established list of community organizations
(those organizations get to choose who serves), whereas in Seattle’s proposed CPC the mayor, the City
Council, and the CPC each choose approximately one-third of the CPC members (meaning two-thirds
are unavoidably political appointees).

The CPC never consulted the community in debating and crafting a local police reform model,
ultimately settling on what they believed was a model that would be acceptable to the existing city
power brokers and the SPD. In essence, the CPC settled for a half-a-loaf approach, only to be
surprised that the police unions would soon thereafter take away half of that partial loaf, with the CPC
powerless to stop it.

Conclusion
The CPC is a bureaucratized and aloof entity that seeks to act as the arbiter between those who suffer at
the hands of the police and those who hold the power to control this abuse. This has created an
increasingly defensive and undemocratic body which projects illusory power in the absence of real
power.

The dozens of local groups who advocated in 2011 for the US Department of Justice to investigate
police abuse in Seattle -- and have since been considered by the CPC as "partner organizations" -- are
not the groups that brought many thousands to the streets for Black Lives Matter in 2014 and 2015, nor
were they the folks who organized opposition to the new King County youth jail or the opposition to
Seattle's proposed new North Precinct police station. These groups, while supportive in words and
spirit, were not the groups that led to the now epic shift in how police reform is viewed and to the
continuing protests, post-George Floyd.

For over two decades one consistent flaw in the attempts at police reform in the US has been
recidivism: when federal oversight ends, or when local politicians believe that the "street heat" has
subsided, bad police behavior returns (examples of this have occurred in Cleveland, Miami, New
Orleans, New Jersey, Chicago, and Los Angeles). This makes it crucial to have robust and fully
transparent accountability systems in place that can guarantee direct community involvement and fully
open records. We must not just re-imagine policing, but re-imagine police accountability as well.