THE TRUTH ABOUT SPD’S USE OF FORCE POLICY AND THE COMMUNITY POLICE COMMISSION
A recent piece in a local community paper concludes that Seattle’s Community Police Commission has a record of “abdication of power and responsibility” and has refused “to admit to over eight years of failure.” It attacked co-chair Rev. Harriett Walden for failing to “revise” SPD Use of Force Policy in the nine years that she has served as a CPC commissioner. This and other harsh allegations imply that the CPC’s alleged “failures” regarding force policies may have contributed to the death of Charleena Lyles and others killed since the CPC was formed in 2013. These allegations are unfounded. As outlined below, the CPC played a crucial role in creating SPD’s restrictive Use of Force Policy, a policy that requires officers to use de-escalation tactics rather than force in most situations. It has greatly reduced aggressive police behavior in thousands of police- community encounters.
Background of CPC’s Involvement in 2015 Use of Force Policy Revision
In 2011, the US Department of Justice found that 70% of all force used by Seattle Police Officers involved persons with mental illness or substance abuse issues, that there was no “strategic and coordinated approach to policing those in crisis” and that few patrol officers had the skills necessary to adequately handle a behavioral crisis event.
In 2012, the City of Seattle entered into a Settlement Agreement with the DOJ requiring that SPD create a much expanded crisis-intervention program. This included the adoption of new Use of Force Policy emphasizing that officers use de-escalation techniques “whenever feasible” to reduce the need for force. The Settlement Agreement did not require that de-escalation techniques take precedence over using force. The first revision to SPD’s Use of Force Policy did not make de- escalation a priority.
The 2012 Settlement Agreement created a 15 member Community Police Commission that included representatives from minority, community and legal advocacy groups as well as police unions.
CPC members insisted from the beginning that they be given a major role in negotiating changes to the Use of Force Policy but the City and court-appointed Monitor refused to do so.In summer 2013, the entire CPC threatened to resign en masse if it was not given a greater role in the development of the new Use of Force Policy. The City and the Monitor then agreed.
The CPC pushed aggressively for a policy that emphasizes de-escalation as a priority over the use of force. This resulted in the revised Use of Force Policy approved by the Court in July 2015. The Court Monitor has recognized that the CPC was crucial to changing the policy to its current form.
A group of 125 officers sued the City and the Monitor in 2014, arguing that a policy emphasizing de-escalation was an unconstitutional violation of their right to self-defense. A federal court dismissed the case. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal in September 2017, ruling that the Policy does not violate the right to self-defense since it permits use of lethal force when “the threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others is imminent.”
SPD’s Use of Force Policy emphasizing de-escalation was recently used by the Washington Attorney General’s office in drafting its Model Use of Force and De-Escalation Policy. https://www.atg.wa.gov/law-enforcement-use-force-and-de-escalation. By December 1, 2022, all Washington law enforcement agencies must adopt a use of force policy consistent with that adopted by SPD in 2015 requiring that officers “use all available and appropriate de-escalation tactics prior to using physical force when possible.”
SPD’s Use of Force Policy and Reduction of Force in Crisis Encounters
SPD’s policy manual defines
SPD’s Use of Force Policy emphasizing de-escalation over force has been successful in reigning in officer behavior towards
those exhibiting these behaviors. By the end of 2021, the SPD Court Monitor found that less than 10% of all force used by SPD officers involved someone experiencing a “behavioral crisis,” a significant reduction since 2011. According to the Monitor, Seattle officers have since 2017 logged about 10,000 “behavioral crisis” contacts” each year, with officers using lethal force in 1 or 2 of those “behavioral crisis” encounters.
Seattle Police killed seven people between 2019 and 2021. In five, officers were arresting or detaining people where they had probable cause to believe that a serious violent felony had been committed. Two involved officers arresting individuals for murder (2/9/21 Gregory Taylor; 8/5/21 Isiah Hinds). Three involved officers investigating serious domestic violence (2/7/19 Danny Rodriguez; 5/8/19 Ryan Smith; 4/29/20 Shaun Lee Fuhr).
Two of the seven can be categorized as “behavioral crisis” contacts. In one, officers attempted to detain a 57 year old Black man who was in some kind of mental crisis and chasing pedestrians in lower Queen Anne while holding a knife (5/19/20 Terry Caver). The officers who shot Mr. Caver were disciplined for failing to de-escalate under the SPDs Use of Force Policy. The second involved a 44 year old White man who was threatening to kill himself with a butcher knife near the waterfront (2/10/21 Derek Hayden). The officers who shot Mr. Hayden were disciplined for failing to de-escalate under the SPDs Use of Force Policy. Civil litigation over the Caver and Hayden deaths are ongoing. The inquests into the circumstances of their deaths have not yet been scheduled.
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a behavioral health crisis as “an episode of mental and/or emotional
distress in a person that is creating significant or repeated disturbances and is considered disruptive by the community, friends, family or the person themselves.”
