Last week the Department of Justice released a damning report about Seattle police officers’ excessive use of force. DOJ didn’t mince words: SPD has a longstanding, systemic problem.
The DOJ was tasked to determine if members of the SPD regularly use excessive force or enforce discriminatory policing.
The answer is a big, fat “yes.” The odds are that at least once a week in this city, a Seattle police officer is physically abusing someone in violation of his or her civil rights.
Yet when it came to determining whether or not SPD practices discriminatory policing, the DOJ said only that “while not conclusive, some data and citizen input suggest that inappropriate pedestrian encounters may disproportionately involve youth of color.”
The report goes on to say that limited data suggests, in certain SPD precincts, officers may be stopping a disproportionate number of people of color when there has been no offense or other police incident taking place. Translation: SPD is potentially stopping people based on skin color and not much else.
The report also says that of the cases that the DOJ determined used unnecessarily excessive force, over half involved people of color.
Why would the DOJ even mention SPD’s alleged inappropriate encounters with youth of color if they could find conclusively that SPD discriminates against non-white people?
I posed that very question to them. U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan told me the incomplete data from SPD prevented the DOJ from handing down a finding of discriminatory policing.
Yet she also said the DOJ heard loud and clear from community members who believe it exists.
“Perception is reality,” she told me. She also said SPD needs to clean up its data and tracking so that incidents between police and people of color can be scrutinized more thoroughly when it comes to race, gender and so on. Durkan is confident SPD can do this in a way that is appropriate and responsible.
When asked if SPD Chief Diaz needs to be fired in order for authentic changes to be made to the department polices, the DOJ punted to the mayor’s office, saying it wasn’t their place to make that determination.
The problem is Mayor McGinn is woefully inexperienced when it comes to matters of public safety.
A number of stakeholders appealed to the mayor to not appoint Diaz as chief a year and a half ago, but rather than restart the national search process after the most qualified candidates withdrew themselves from consideration, McGinn tapped Diaz, interim chief at the time. Many say McGinn mistakenly bent to the wishes of the police union.
Initially, the mayor sat on the fence about the DOJ’s report, referring to the findings as mere “allegations,” while Diaz openly refuted the report, saying an internal department review of the same data came up with different findings.
That doesn’t bode well for change.
What the mayor fails to understand is that in communities such as South Seattle, abusive policing is not a revelation, it’s a reality.
It’s why so many youth are afraid to walk the streets in their own neighborhood, or stand at a Metro bus stop or stay out past dark with their friends. They aren’t worrying about a stray bullet from some gang banger; they’re worried about getting snatched up by power-hungry police out to prove their authority.
After talking with community groups, McGinn ordered Diaz to begin implementation of the DOJ’s findings. Unfortunately, his 11th-hour order doesn’t begin to erase his initial reaction of flat-out denial.
Seattle residents deserve to know if our mayor understands and accepts responsibility for the failures of the police department, or if he’s just going along with the findings because it’s the most expedient thing to do and a way to avoid embarrassment for the city.
This will be a defining moment for the McGinn administration.