Last Wednesday, May 30, two shootings in areas not normally associated with violent crimes — the multiple murders at Cafe Racer and a shooting in a parking lot next to Town Hall — shook the city.
The shooters (who turned out to be the same man) left the scenes of their crimes, triggering massive manhunts, school lockdowns and a local media feeding frenzy. It’s a fair assumption that almost everyone in Seattle that day was hoping that the Seattle Police Department (SPD) would catch the perpetrator(s) quickly and efficiently.
But less than a week previously — before a rash of Memorial Day shootings that culminated in Wednesday’s tragedies — this was the opening of a Seattle Times story: “Twice in the past two weeks, Seattle police say, a hostile crowd at the scene of a violent crime has prevented officers from securing an area, slowing medical assistance to victims.”
In both of those cases — one on Capitol Hill, one in Rainier Beach — it wasn’t clear what provoked the crowd hostility. It could have been simple anti-cop animus; in some cases, crowds are frustrated that police don’t take their statements seriously. Either cause boils down to the same thing: random witnesses and bystanders to a serious violent crime not trusting that the police are on their side.
Not in good faith
In the Rainier Beach shooting, it was witness statements that led police to the alleged shooter, but the immediate crowd response significantly delayed paramedic access to the wounded victim, who died at the scene.
That — not the less-typical case of last week’s mass murders — is why the response of Mayor Mike McGinn, the Seattle City Council and SPD leadership to calls for meaningful SPD reform has been so appalling.
At his press conference in the aftermath of Wednesday’s shootings, McGinn spent much of his time pointedly praising SPD and using the political opportunity to call for a reexamination of gun laws (which is fine and well, except that it was completely unclear at that point whether the gun-law reforms he mentioned were even remotely relevant to the day’s events). He took community support for SPD as a given.
That’s consistent with McGinn’s and SPD’s response to the ongoing negotiations with the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) over SPD reforms. The actual content of the DOJ’s preferred reforms and those recommendations haven’t been made public, but we do know a few things.
We know that the public response by McGinn to the DOJ, his “20/20” plan, is a content-free piece of PR fluffery (“Hire great officers!”) that does nothing to address either the DOJ’s concerns or the widespread lack of community trust in SPD.
We learned in late May (via The Seattle Times) that: “A top attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department has sent Seattle officials two sternly worded letters in the past 10 days, questioning whether the city is negotiating proposed police fixes in good faith.... Two sources described the [first] letter...as containing ‘scathing’ language’.... The [second] letter, which was shorter than the first, directed the city to ‘get serious’ about negotiations.”
We know that this follows on previous reports that the DOJ’s proposed reforms (unlike that “20/20” plan) are highly specific and being resisted by the city; that the city is not looking at any specific reforms around the issue of racial bias in its policing (the DOJ report didn’t address it only because the SPD’s record-keeping was so bad that the DOJ could only compile anecdotal evidence of the problem); and that the city is primarily concerned about minimizing exposure to possible lawsuits, not about actually fixing problems on the ground or restoring community trust.
The first of those lawsuits, from the DOJ itself, could come at any time if the DOJ feels the city isn’t negotiating in good faith.
Earning community trust
Community trust for SPD matters. In May’s Rainier Beach shooting, the lack of it may have cost a young man his life.
With deadly violence up sharply this year — much of it taking place in communities where distrust of SPD runs deep — McGinn and his allies can talk all they want about gun laws and “giving police the resources they need.” (Note that the city is apparently simultaneously rejecting the DOJ’s recommendations as too expensive because they’d cost some $41 million, a total McGinn called “shocking”; SPD’s annual budget is $254 million.)
SPD can have all the beat cops and shiny toys they want — cash-strapped budget be damned — and it won’t make much difference if the neighborhoods where they’re deployed regard SPD as an occupying army, and an officer or patrol car as something that makes them feel less — not more — safe.
The vast majority of SPD officers are decent people trying to do a difficult job. But the problem is deeper than the occasional “bad apple” the system coughs up as a sacrificial lamb. When officers beat the crap out of a random, unarmed teenager, they should be fired; when they use deadly force against someone unarmed and posing no threat, they should be charged with a crime.
When SPD, instead, closes ranks to defend such officers, it tells other officers, as well as everyone in the community, that an officer can do just about anything with almost no chance of public accountability. It’s a training issue, it’s a cultural issue and it’s a long-term project of building community relationships and trust.
Gun laws are something the city itself can’t do much about; as a rhetorical device, they’re convenient that way. Reforming SPD can start now, if only city and leaders wanted to. The longer they talk about everything except SPD’s central problem, the more difficult it’ll be to bridge the chasm of distrust between SPD and many of the communities it tries to serve — and the more people that will die as a result.
GEOV PARRISH is cofounder of Eat the State! He also reviews news of the week on “Mind Over Matters” on KEXP 90.3 FM.