Last month, a day before a meeting between city officials and the federal Department of Justice (DOJ), Mayor Mike McGinn — with much fanfare — tried to preempt federal intervention by releasing a series of reforms ostensibly intended to fix all that is very wrong with the Seattle Police Department (SPD).
Local media did an astonishingly poor job of actually examining those 20 reforms. Nobody seemed to note that almost all of the so-called “reforms” are both vapid and completely detail-free — so vapid, in fact, that one suspects there are 20 such reforms solely so that it could be called SPD’s “20/20 Plan.” (These reforms will supposedly be instituted in 20 months — no rush.) This “plan” was and is, above all, a public relations document, not a serious plan for SPD reform.
A whole lot of nothing
How vapid? Look at them yourself, something almost no media accounts bothered to allow viewers or readers to do. And bear in mind that this list was all McGinn released — no other detail was made public:
1. Reform management of public demonstrations.
2. Develop protocols to prevent low-level offenses from escalating.
3. Address biased policing.
4. Train all officers on use of force standards consistent with Seattle’s values.
5. Train officers in appropriate search-and-seizure practices.
6. Improve supervision by creating a Sergeant’s Academy.
7. Improve leadership by creating a Commander Academy.
8. Train new officers to understand Seattle.
9. Improve review of uses of force.
10. Develop a binding, written code of ethics.
11. Recruit great officers.
12. Systematic enforcement of professional standards.
13. Enhance early intervention systems.
14. Implement a data-driven approach to policing.
15. Work with major city police departments to develop best practices.
16. Listen and explain with equity and dignity.
17. Provide better information to the public.
18. Improve transparency and accountability.
19. Launch a community-outreach initiative.
20. Launch a customer-relations initiative.
Every single one of these 20 points falls into one or more of the following categories: “Hey! Good idea!” (slaps forehead); “You mean they’ve never done this before?”; “You wanna give any details? Any at all? Like, are you intending to try to make things better, or worse?”; and “What on Earth is this supposed to mean?”
Pick an item. No. 4: “Train all officers on use of force consistent with Seattle’s values.” Really? And what values are those? “We shouldn’t shoot unarmed civilians?” “Shooting unarmed civilians is fine, so long as they’re not white?” Something in between, perhaps?
Ditto, No. 8: “Train new officers to understand Seattle.” (I suppose the verb “grok” has gone out of style.)
We can only assume No. 3, “Address biased policing,” means they’re against it, but who can tell? And what’s considered “biased policing,” and how do they want to address it?
There are the ones where the biggest revelation is the implication that this is somehow new, like No. 12, “Systematic enforcement of professional standards.” For a profession with, practically speaking, a free legal pass to use deadly force on anyone at all — not to mention a daily job description that can ruin lives as an afterthought — you’d think this would be hard-wired into the department’s DNA. Guess not.
Or No. 16, “Listen and explain with dignity and equity,” wouldn’t be on the list, either. (Or maybe they figured out that “Haul off and cold-cock any teenager who gets lippy” wouldn’t play as well.)
And, there’s not currently a binding code of ethics (No. 10)?
Then there’s my favorite: No. 11, “Recruit great officers.” Aside from being an item that any current SPD officer should take as a personal insult — since it implies that this would be a new thing, and aside from marveling that this has never apparently been a goal before — what’s a “great officer?”
And how does anyone know, ahead of time, that a prospective recruit will be “great”?
This is meaningless garbage that manages to be insulting to both current officers and any Seattle citizen with a modicum of sense.
The last one, No. 20, is most telling: “Launch a customer-relations initiative.” Setting aside the question of who SPD’s “customers” are — presumably they don’t think it’s simply Seattle citizens, or they’d say so — suggesting a public-relations campaign (also the heart of No. 19) as a reform strategy perfectly encapsulates both this “plan” and McGinn and SPD’s response thus far to the DOJ’s blistering report.
A PR stunt?
That report came out five long months ago, and the official Seattle response has ranged from denial to lip service to this bureaucratic nonsense. McGinn, Seattle City Council and SPD leadership seem to see the DOJ’s exhaustive review not as forcing the city to finally act on long-festering problems that have alienated SPD from significant segments of Seattle’s population, but as a PR problem best fixed by press releases, cooing noises and gestures like this.
Not surprisingly, the DOJ’s own proposals the following day echoed almost none of this. Instead, the DOJ had sweeping, specific recommendations, which weren’t made public while details were negotiated with the city, but which, the DoJ reiterated, must be court-enforceable — meaning specific targets and metrics that progress on the reforms can be measured by.
I’m guessing they don’t mean, “Sixteen more officers understood Seattle this month.”
But McGinn’s plan wasn’t meant for the DOJ. It was a public-relations stunt, meant to convince you and me, through a credulous local media, that city leadership takes SPD’s myriad problems seriously. It clearly doesn’t, or such a preposterous plan would never have been drawn up in the first place.
GEOV PARRISH is cofounder of Eat the State! He also reviews news of the week on “Mind Over Matters” on KEXP 90.3 FM.
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