Chris Landry
Stop the killings! Marchers demand police accountability.
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"I WANT TO LIVE."
With these words, Khalil Ayes, a young African-American emceeing a half dozen speeches, summed up the fear and anger of a crowd standing only a few Central District footsteps from where police shot and killed Edward Anderson in January 1996. The June 15 rally and march, along with last month's First A.M.E. Church confrontation between Mayor Paul Schell and a crowd of 800 angry citizens, marks a new and potent movement demanding law enforcement accountability and the end of police violence in Seattle.
The crisis facing the Seattle Police Department is not one caused by a single shooting. True, the fatal April 12 Queen Anne shooting of an armed outpatient, David Walker, has drawn much community ire. US Attorney Kate Pflaumer, overruling an FBI recommendation, has ordered a federal civil rights investigation of the incident. But the black community's demand for independent accountability for the police force dates back at least 40 years and spans lifetimes of perceived injustices, racist treatment, "Driving While Black" traffic stops, and an almost universally held truism in communities of color that police are not your friends and cannot be trusted. "There is an undeniable double standard in the treatment of persons of color with respect to the law," says Reverend Leslie Braxton of Mount Zion Baptist Church, echoing the sentiments of many. "Black folks have been living with this always in this country. We've always had to deal with tyrannical power."
Moreover, many believe the police will never investigate themselves and that their internal processes are an open joke. The current round of pressure for civilian review of the police stems from a mayoral blue ribbon panel called last year in the wake of the Sonny Davis case. In that incident, several officers and an internal review failed to uncover and deal with a detective's alleged posthumous theft of money from an African-American man shot and killed by the police.
The King County inquest process has also been a grossly inadequate check. In the last 20 years, no fatal police shooting or death in police custody in Seattle, whether of armed or unarmed suspects, has been ruled unjustified. Regardless of the individual circumstances or of the checks and balances in the system, with that record it's hard to convince people the system is not rigged. Furthermore, plenty of anecdotal evidence bolsters the widespread belief that abuses of power are common in communities of color. Therefore, no matter how honorably SPD officers conduct themselves as individuals, as long as a large segment of society distrusts, fears, and hates the police, SPD has a problem.
PROTESTER'S DEMANDS FOR an independent civilian review board are largely responsible for the apparent police guild concession in recent contract talks that gives the OK to some sort of citizen advisory panel. (Contract details are confidential until the tentative agreement between the city and the Seattle Police Officers' Guild goes to a guild membership vote in the next few weeks.) Without the groundswell of activism by some of the leading members of Seattle's African-American community, particularly the black churches, it's unlikely the city would have held out for the concessions.
The contract adds to what is already a complicated, awkward, multilevel approach to investigating police misconduct. For years, an independent auditor has monitored complaints against SPD. But without the power to conduct investigations, that position has been no more than a rubber stamp for the SPD's own internal investigations. Last November, acting on recommendations from the mayor's committee, the City Council created an Office for Police Accountability (OPA). The Director of the OPA, a civilian, is appointed by the police chief (a feature criticized by many); he or she, in turn, answers to a three-person panel comprised of a city representative, a police officer, and a community member. Although the enabling legislation was passed late last year, no civilian director of the OPA has been hired, pending the outcome of negotiations with the guild.
Press reports indicate the tentative contract agreement calls for a "citizen advisory panel." However, apparently the structure called for is close to the council's version of the OPA, with minimal involvement by private citizens. This won't be enough to satisfy department critics.
What demonstrators and African-American community leaders want was well summarized by the demands presented to Mayor Schell at the May 15 First A.M.E. meeting. Those demands included an independent citizens review board with investigative and subpoena power, the collection of data on racial profiling and racially disproportionate arrest, a review of the SPD's policy on the use of deadly force, the hiring and promotion of more minorities within SPD, and reform of King County's inquest system.
Reverend Braxton was unimpressed by Schell's performance at First A.M.E. "I thought he genuinely meant well, but he was very poorly prepared for that meeting. He failed to make a general statement to the effect that we all saw something that went terribly wrong. . . . They just recently killed a black man where all eyes can see."
Dustin Washington of the grassroots People's Coalition for Justice, an organization that has been sponsoring regular marches and rallies in support of police accountability, is more blunt. "It was a joke, it was a waste of time," scoffs Washington, who walked out during the meeting. "Hopefully that will be reflected come election time."
