By Steve Miletich
The Seattle Times
SEATTLE — With U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch poised to visit Seattle Thursday, the Justice Department’s top civil-rights attorney met Wednesday with the citizen commission created as part of federally mandated reforms to curb excessive force and biased policing in the Seattle Police Department.
Vanita Gupta, acting assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division, heard a loud message from members of the Community Police Commission (CPC): that while the 15-member commission has voluntarily toiled to help bring about reforms, it has been given marginal status and not treated seriously at times under the terms of a 2012 settlement agreement between the city and the Justice Department.
“There have been challenges, there have been roadblocks and there have been difficulties that we’ve encountered,” said Enrique Gonzalez of the Seattle social-justice organization El Centro de la Raza.
“There has to be some real skin in the game,” added Melinda Giovengo, executive director of YouthCare in Seattle.
Their remarks referred, in part, to the fact the CPC is not a formal party in the court case under which reforms have been carried out. The CPC has been granted the opportunity to comment on matters as a friend of the court, but U.S. District Judge James Robart denied its request to become a party.
Robart has also strongly criticized efforts to expand the CPC’s authority and make it a permanent body without seeking the court’s approval.
In August, Robart asked key players in the process, including the CPC, to submit ideas for a comprehensive approach to establishing accountability systems throughout the Police Department.
Gupta, who acknowledged the CPC’s important role and pledged to consider its concerns, is to continue her visit Thursday, along with Lynch.
Lynch, who is on a community-policing tour, has visited various cities across the country to call attention to what the Justice Department describes as “collaborative programs and innovative policing practices” to improve public safety and strengthen relations between police and communities.
She is expected to announce grants to combat human trafficking, meet with Seattle police officers, hold a roundtable discussion with local youth and discuss community policing.
Gupta, during Wednesday’s meeting with the CPC at Seattle City Hall, called the commission a “model” for other cities undergoing reforms efforts.
Commission member David Keenan, a Seattle attorney, said it was critical to adopt “sustainable” changes in Seattle for long after the Justice Department and the court are no longer involved.
Commission co-chair Lisa Daugaard cited roadblocks in getting important issues to the court, with the understanding the CPC might not prevail.
“But we do expect to lose on the merits if we’re going to lose,” she said of the difficulty of making its points.
Daugaard chided the Justice Department for its recent award of a $600,000 grant to Seattle police for its body-camera program, when the commission has raised serious concerns about the dignity and safety of people who are recorded on cameras.
While recognizing body cameras can be a useful tool for police accountability, the commission Wednesday renewed its request to Seattle police to hold off on plans to use the cameras until state public-disclosure laws are modified to address privacy concerns.
Gupta, who was flanked by U.S. Attorney Annette Hayes of the Western District of Washington, said the money isn’t to dictate how it should be used, but to support the broad development of the program, including addressing issues.
Gupta later attended a briefing at Seattle police headquarters, where she was told of the department’s crisis-intervention efforts under the settlement agreement.
Department data, recently released, shows it is on track to log roughly 10,000 incident reports annually involving contacts with the mentally ill and people in crisis. The numbers also show police are using force in a tiny fraction of the encounters.
The Justice Department, in its 2011 finding that Seattle police too often resorted to excessive force, noted many of the victims were people with mental illness or under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Copyright 2015 The Seattle Times