1. The Community Police Commission, whose internal struggles we covered earlier this month, has appointed Bessie Scott, the deputy inspector general at the city’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), as its acting director, a temporary position, CPC co-chair Joel Merkel confirmed.
Cali Ellis, the current director, has been on administrative leave since last month amid staff complaints about her leadership; in the past two months, almost every member of the CPC’s small staff has resigned or gone on leave, and the commission itself has struggled to maintain a full roster of 15 members.
The CPC is a fully independent arm of the three-pronged police accountability system Seattle established in response to a federal consent decree in 2012; its mission is to listen to feedback from diverse communities and advocate for policies that improve police accountability. The Office of Police Accountability investigates complaints against police, and the OIG provides oversight of the entire police accountability system.
Scott, who did not respond to calls for comment, was the policy director of the CPC between 2018 and 2020 and served as interim director from 2019 to 2020.
The CPC ordinarily holds meetings twice a month, but canceled its meeting this week and plans to hold meetings monthly while it addresses internal issues and hires a deputy director (and, presumably, a permanent executive director); the deputy director is a new position.
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2. The city of Burien will not hold an open, public process for selecting a new police chief to replace popular former chief Ted Boe, who was effectively pushed out after City Manager Adolfo Bailon began demanding his removal in March. Boe resigned in June and took a job as police chief in Des Moines.
Burien contracts for police service with the King County Sheriff’s Office, which is currently suing the city over its total ban on sleeping outdoors, which the sheriff’s office—meaning Boe and his deputies—have declined to enforce.
Instead of a public process, the city council and manager will choose the new police chief after a series of private meetings with a handpicked group of stakeholders and the entire council, divided up into two groups of three.
The council’s meetings may constitute a “serial meeting” under the Open Public Meetings Act, which prohibits government bodies from taking collective action in private. One type of illegal serial meeting is when a legislative body, like a city council, splits up to have a series of private meetings that result in collective action by the larger body.
Earlier this year, a man sued the city after a majority of the city council held a press conference, and took public comments, without providing notice of the meeting or inviting the public to attend. The plaintiff, Arthur West, accused the council of violating the OPMA.
In an email to Burien City Councilmembers, Bailon said he knew that “some members of our community long-for” the “public component” of the selection process the city used when choosing Boe six years ago.
“However, the new process includes considerably more direct input from people of color and is more representative of the cultural and ethnic diversity that exists in Burien I believe firmly that it is far more important to seek and include input from people of color – that make-up a considerable percentage of our population – than it is to provide a venue for politically-extreme activists – with little to no diversity in culture or race – that drown-out voices from people of color.” (Emphasis in original).
The community panel includes five people of color. The rest of the people of color giving input on the police chief are city staffers (including Bailon) and council members themselves.
Bailon—who frequently calls 911 to report people he believes are setting up tents or using drugs outside his office—has expressed frustration about people who oppose the city’s harsh stance on homeless encampments.