City of Olympia - Police Guild Contract Ends December 2015
By Janine Unsoeld
According to an article by Ansel Herz posted May 22
in The Stranger, a Seattle
publication, an Olympia police officer who shot two unarmed African American
men also fired a bullet into a nearby home.
The article is at: http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2015/05/22/22265239/olympia-police-officer-who-shot-two-unarmed-black-men-also-fired-a-bullet-into-a-nearby-home
Olympians
Express Continued Shock, Anger, Concern
Conversations this weekend in most Olympia
restaurants, coffee shops, homes, and social media sites continue to express a
wide range of emotions about the shooting incident.
Reflecting
the thoughts of many Olympians, many wonder why local corporate media has
already seemingly moved on from the shooting.
Zoltan Grossman, a faculty member at The Evergreen
State College, knows the young family whose window was said to have been shot out by
the officer’s bullet and confirmed The Stranger's story for Little Hollywood.
“Why hasn't this angle been covered in the Olympia
police shooting? I know one of the young
people who lives in the house that was struck by Officer Donald's bullet. The
residents report that there were around 10 gunshots. I have seen other photos
of the broken window on the second floor,” says Grossman.
Following the incident, Grossman says he wrote an
email to The Olympian but has not yet
heard back from the newspaper, and shared it with Little Hollywood:
“….You've covered every possible angle to support a
pro-police point of view--the video from Safeway, the records of the victims,
windows broken by protesters separate from the larger protests. But I haven't
seen a word about the bullet breaking the upstairs window of an Olympia home,
in what could amount to reckless endangerment by Officer Donald. The police
themselves have recovered the bullet and interviewed the residents --why
haven't you? It deserves a separate article and interviews with the residents,”
wrote Grossman.
Wendy Tanowitz of Olympia spoke at a downtown community
gathering last Thursday night at Temple Beth Hatfiloh.
Tanowitz has conducted much research into local and
national law enforcement actions, and was asked by Little Hollywood today for more information.
“....I'm very concerned and hyper-sensitive to systemic and institutional
abuse of power in all its forms….Many factors contribute to a culture of impunity
among people who work in law enforcement, not the least of which is that they
are almost never held accountable for their actions, and the criminal
(in)justice system exists to protect and shield them from the legal
consequences of shooting or killing someone,” she said.
In researching how many people are killed while in contact with police, Tanowitz learned that there is no national database where these figures are available. She says a grassroots-generated site exists at www.killedbypolice.net but it is incomplete.
That group estimates that 1,000 people were killed by police or while in police custody in 2014. Their Facebook page is: https://www.facebook.com/KilledByPolice/posts/1026884260673044?_rdr
She said that the use of a Taser instead of a
firearm and the officer calling for backup before he shot two men should have
been considered.
“People who work in law enforcement should never take
it upon themselves to act as judge, jury and executioner. Many hundreds of
people - the number sometimes approaches 1,000 - are killed or injured in the
United States each year by law enforcement who said they felt threatened. This
must end. Police are hired to protect public safety and must held be
accountable for their actions….There must have been other ways to have handled
this situation short of using potentially deadly force. We need to know what
happened Thursday morning in Olympia, but we have no video record. This can and
should be remedied in the future by mandating that all Olympia police department
officers wear body cameras.”
City
of Olympia-Olympia Police Guild Contract
The three year contract between the City
of Olympia and the Police Guild ends in December 2015, just in time for a new
contract to mandate body cameras for the Olympia Police Department.
The January 1, 2013 - December 31, 2015
contract is located here: http://www.codepublishing.com/wa/olympia/mobile/?pg=labor/OlympiaLabor05.html
Although Article 22 of the contract details
the use of dash-mounted video systems, it has not been implemented.
Related to a police incident involving local resident Scott Yoos, Tanowitz read the Police Guild
contract and in an October 8, 2013 meeting of the Olympia City Council, she asked
when the dash cameras would be installed.
In response, according to the minutes, Police Chief Ronnie
Roberts addressed the council and the issues regarding record retention and
additional staff needed to manage the large amount of data. He said body mics
or cameras would also impact records requests.
In a vote of 6 – 1, the contract was
approved at that meeting by Councilmembers Stephen Buxbaum, Nathaniel Jones, Jim
Cooper, Julie Hankins, and Jeannine Roe. The only one who did not approve it
was then-Councilmember Karen Rogers.
At the time, Mayor Buxbaum asked that a
list of frequently asked questions regarding dash cameras be produced for the
public and include the cost breakdown for records requests.
A search on the City of Olympia website,
www.olympiawa.gov for that list brought
up no results.
Future Police
Accountability
The Olympia police department does not
currently have a police auditor - the position was cut for budgetary reasons in 2009. The
department has never had a citizen review panel, although there has been
discussion about it.
In the past, a police auditor reported
directly to the city council. The auditor, hired on an annual contract,
reported on a quarterly basis, and conducted an internal affairs investigation,
looking into use of force and other complaints.
In an interview with Little Hollywood in December 2014, Laura
Wohl, who was then public information officer for the department said:
“It is very unusual for a department of
our size to have a citizen review panel. If a citizen makes a complaint, a
professional standards lieutenant does a complete investigation into policy and
law. For some complaints, a dispute mediator is used, for example, if a
complainant feels an officer was rude....it's different than any other
employment situation. It's a full investigation when a complaint is made of any
kind,” said Wohl.
“After the professional standards
lieutenant makes his or her findings, it is reviewed by the commander and chief
of police. If it is sustained, disciplinary action is taken. If somebody
doesn't like the determination, and feels they have been harmed, they can make
a claim with the city, or file a civil liability tort, and sue us.”
Little
Hollywood has written many past stories about the Olympia Police Department,
including the crisis intervention training of a police officer, police accountability, statistics
on officer demographics regarding gender, race, and language diversity, the incident regarding Olympia resident Scott Yoos and
more. For more information, go to www.janinelittlehollywood.blogspot.com
and use the search button to type in key words.
