From what I've heard about many police forces, cops who do try to change things are run out. There was a cop here recently who thought he was being treated differently because of the color of his skin and he was drug through the mud. I realize I may not have all the information and that these situations are always more nuanced than we realize, so I wonder if you could shed some light on how a person who wants to change police procedures would be accepted. What kind of reaction among other cops would you get if you started criticizing other cops or the tactics/protocol of the entire department? I've never been a cop, I have been in the military, and a person wouldn't last very long bucking the system there. I can't imagine it being too much different with cops.

With provocatively titled chapters like “Why White Cops Kill Black Men” and “Sexual Predators in Uniform,” Stamper reveals a force that can be racist, corrupt, overly militaristic, and chauvinist, yet is also made up of brave and good men and women. He reflects upon what it is like to kill a man, why drugs should be decriminalized, the correct approach to prostitution and gun control, and how the force should be trained for the future. Stamper’s prescriptions for change are both reasoned and challenging, but at no time does Breaking Rank become didactic— it is a riveting story told from the perspective of one of America's top cops on the street."

What I learned from reading Stamper was that his intention, to turn policing around from inside, and ON TOP, was thwarted for the simple reason that Institutions shape professionals, not the other way around. No one comes into an agency without largely bending to and conforming to its underlying assumptions about most core agency functions. By the time one is a professional, as opposed to a probationary, within an organization one has already passed some several gates of entry, any one of which is disqualifying. You simply don't have the power handed to you, you get it lent to you only as long as it serves your sponsors. And you graduate into the trust stepwise, so as to maximize your usefulness to the organization and disqualify or demote you at the first sign of disruption / liability.
That, after all is why you unionize (or guild) to counterbalance the vicissitudes of such decisions, yes?

Run for city council, get three people with similar views to join you, and change it from there. I mean structurally change it, not just issue a directive.

We made some changes a few years ago, to provide more oversight. Now I think we should have gone farther, though I don't think we had the votes to do so.

A big - but too little noticed - issue is the police contract. Too much defacto policy-making authority has been given away to the police guild through the contract, specifically through the rules on what policy changes must be negotiated (which gives the guild virtual veto power).

But much of the current council was endorsed by the guild, so don't look for that happening now.

Matthew

I think a lot of it is going to depend on what you want to change.

If you're wanting to create a police department that would prefer an officer drive down the street and wave, doing little more than serving as a public relations officer for the municipality, you would want to be at the top of the food chain in order to control the hiring process.

If you want to root out real problems - such as real corruption - you need to be within the ranks and lead by example, working your way up the ladder and being a leader people want to follow.

And then some stuff is simply inherent with the profession; it may not be popular but it would be difficult - if not impossible - to eliminate and still have any semblance of the job title.

As I've said before, I think some people are trying to staff the police department with armed social workers, not cops.

Rob,

I posted this announcement as it’s local news, and there may be some that write or lurk here that might want to enter into a career in law enforcement.  The manner in which I posted was an attempt at humor.

As far as being effective in taking any organization in another direction one has to determine if there is a need.  Certainly there is a minority in this community that believes that is the case with OPD.  Police mirror their community, or police as their community wants them to police.  What works for Chicago likely isn’t good for Olympia.  Some here think OPD needs a change in direction, but I believe most of the City is happy with the way OPD does police work.  Frankly I believe the majority of the citizens of Oly are far happier with OPD’s work at the port protests than the first Mayday mess.  But to answer your question can one, two, or a few influence a dept. enough to change it, I think they can.  Heck, just look at what Frank Serpico did with NYPD and the corruption problem they had.  Would it be easy, no.  And it would be even harder in OPD, because really there isn’t much to fix, at least on a large scale.  If you want to see police depts with large scale problems check out badcopnews.com.

As for the officer you mention, this is not the place to discuss that issue.  If you have a desire to learn what happened from the side of the City, you can do an FOIA request and get any investigations that were founded.  Unfounded stuff won’t be released, but it also wouldn’t be used to terminate.  It is real easy for someone on the sidelines to take a cheap shot about someone being terminated because of their skin color, yet have no facts to back it up.  It’s just plain bogus Rob.  You have made comments in the past with no facts to back it up, and really does nothing for the conversation, and further creates a perception that likely is incorrect.  I would ask that you stop it.  If you have hard facts about issues with officers, post it!  But the rumor and innuendo stuff is BS.

FWIW, Chief Michel has terminated 5 officers since he has been here.  1 white male, 1 Italian-American, 1 white female, 1 Hispanic male, and 1 African-American male.  Seems his wrath is other than race based.

Matt,

I find your comments about unions interesting.  Usually, someone on the liberal side of the political scale is pro-union.  Yet you seem frustrated by your experience with the Police Guild.  Your contention that the police union contract has the power isn’t completely correct.  The police union has some legal guarantees, just like management/the city does, the power base comes from State law which benefits both management and labor.  Through that negotiation process, both sides agree to the contents of the contract.  Any change the City/Council might want, they can always re-negotiate.

The police union has legal guarantees in the area of wages, working conditions, and hours of work.  Things under this umbrella are mandatory topics of bargaining.  Changes in this area are required to be negotiated.  If a settlement can’t be agreed upon by the parties the issue goes to an arbitrator to make the final and binding decision.  Management has areas that are guaranteed, the most important comes under management rights.  Again if labor wants changes here they have to be negotiated.  Then there is the gray area which is issues of permissive bargaining.  There really is a lot of stuff that comes under this umbrella.  If management and unions have good relations the permissive stuff is easy to deal with, and the mandatory stuff is fairly easy as well.  The Police Guild and Police Management have a pretty good relationship.  We don’t always agree, but for the most part we get along well.

Now as far as any change, i.e. like the addition of citizen review board, like is near and dear to the hearts of bloggers here, it is a mandatory topic of bargaining.  So if the management, or the City Council wants to go to a citizen review board, they need to negotiate for it.  The City Council would need to bring it to contract negotiations and bargain for it.  So far that hasn’t happened.  Of course being a former member and maybe a future member of the City Council, you will know to negotiate for an issue, you need to support why you want it with data, and how that data is weighed out with the comparable cities to Olympia.  A quick example of some data the council should produce would be how Olympia stacks up with other comparable cities that have citizen review process.  On top of that, how does Olympia stack up with comparable cities on total excessive force complaints compared with founded excessive force complaints.  In other words, the City would need to demonstrate the need/interest in the change.  The union is required to negotiate in good faith just like the City is.  So if the City were to bring the issue of a citizen review board to the union, we would have to negotiate in good faith.  But the union would expect, just like the City Council expects of us, to have your data to support your position.  I’m only guessing, since the CRB issue never came to the table, is the council didn’t believe they had the data to support their position.

If you remember, when the City wanted to hire the police auditor, the Police Guild wasn’t a road block to that at all.  Frankly we could have forced the council to negotiate for that.  But we chose recuse ourselves from the process, only sending a letter to the council that we believed the transition was too soon after Gary Michel was hired and the council wasn’t giving him time to prove he could handle internal stuff appropriately.

Personally and professionally, I don’t believe a citizen review board is a good idea.  As I posted in the past, statistically officers get found in the wrong less from CRBs and the discipline they receive tends to be less severe as well.  So if the goal is to hold officers the City believes are out of line accountable, CRBs are counter-productive.  I have yet to see an issue that Olympia PD is out of line with respect to the industry standard in policing, to include use of force.  And I believe the level of service and force application is where the majority of the citizens of Olympia want it as well.  Two surveys of the citizens of Olympia have been conducted over a period of several years.  Both times the survey came back with an 80%+ approval rating for the PD.  The City Council in the same surveys was way below that, if memory serves in the 30% range.  I wonder what your personal approval rating was as a council member?

So if the City Council has something they want to change in the area of mandatory bargaining, bring it to the table.

"I de-clutch, you know." Juan Manuel Fangio when asked how he avoids flat-spotting his tires when he spins the car.

Matthew,

I would disagree with you that the Police Guild has a poor relationship with city management.  Now if you include the city council as city management, then I might be more inclined to agree with you. 

City management in my view are the people who are hired to manage the City, not elected officials.  The Police Guild has a very good relationship with City Manager Steve Hall, and the dept head of HR, Cathy Raymond.  Those are really the only two we deal with, although Subir Mukerjee has been involved some too recently.  But all in all we have a good relationship with city management and I believe they would agree.

As far as the union’s relationship with the city council, in the 22 years I have been here, there have been good times and bad times.  As of the end of 2007 we are coming out of a protracted bad time and are looking forward to better times.  We have enjoyed positive relations with some of the council members even in the bad times, but the several of the council members in the recent past has made life difficult for the police union, being obstructionists in their own style.  The police union actively campaigned against Johnson and Ware during their bid for council, and of course they won.  So the union repeatedly felt the pain of that loss, with some payback going on.  There were council persons that leaned more towards those two with their line of thinking, and that likely multiplied our difficulties.  Such is the nature of politics, and we knew that going in.   Johnson, Ware and others in the past have had an axe to grind with the police dept as a whole, and the guild is part of that dept so there is co-mingling of issues, and subsequent difficulties.  There has been bad blood between the police union and the city council in the past, but not all the responsibility for that conflict sits in the lap of the police union alone.

As to the issue of the police auditor, I again would disagree with your perceptions of the union’s motivations.  Clearly we strongly disagreed with the idea of a police auditor for a number of reasons, and the letter declining to participate shared that strong disagreement.  I wouldn’t characterize the letter as threatening, or hostile but certainly direct.  I find it interesting you chose those words though. 

The union had no interest in the auditor system, as an auditor system statistically is a stepping stone to a CRB.  Also, the union believed the council’s desire to bring on an auditor so early in Gary Michel’s appointment as the chief of police was a slap in his face. 

If you want to discuss this issue more, we likely should take it to a PM, or perhaps over a cup of coffee.

"I de-clutch, you know." Juan Manuel Fangio when asked how he avoids flat-spotting his tires when he spins the car.

First, I guess you believe the current system is broken, I don't believe it is and I would like you to say why you think it is. Secondly, a CRB would be ok if done correctly.

This is an activist city that many HATE the police. How do you ensure you don't have those of that extreme view and obvious bias not be on the CRB? How will the CRB decide issues? Will it decide on the basis of industry standards and dept policy? Or will the CRB decide whether there was wrong doing based on some other system?

The issue for those that want a CRB isn't about weeding out bads apples, because that obviously is being done. I believe the motive is different, what is the motive, Rob?

"I de-clutch, you know." Juan Manuel Fangio when asked how he avoids flat-spotting his tires when he spins the car.

for just policy changes.

"I de-clutch, you know." Juan Manuel Fangio when asked how he avoids flat-spotting his tires when he spins the car.