Tag: Criminal Justice Training Commission

Crime, King County, Mayor Harrell, Morning Fizz, Police

Downtown Seattle Could Get Storefront Police Precinct, Finalist for Sheriff Would Have to Go Back to Police Academy if Appointed

1. The Seattle Police Department could open a “mini precinct” in a storefront owned by the Low Income Housing Institute on Third Avenue downtown, and is also considering a second location at LIHI’s Frye Apartments in Pioneer Square, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office and LIHI director Sharon Lee confirmed.

The Third Avenue storefront, a short-lived Shake n Shake location, is on the ground floor of LIHI’s Glen Hotel Apartments, a single-room occupancy low-income housing building. Before the pandemic, the block was home to a Kress IGA grocery store and a TJ Maxx discount store, but both shut down in 2020, leaving most of the block without a tenant to attract foot traffic. The site is one block from Third and Pine, a locus of the recent crackdown on street-level crime known as Operation New Day. According to Lee, the “illegal market activity” has gotten worse since police swept Third and Pine, as drug dealers and people selling shoplifted items moved to nearby locations.

Lee said people have broken in to the apartment building and slept, urinated, and defecated in the hallways and stairwells. “The residents upstairs are scared to come out at night; they’re scared to walk around the neighborhood,” Lee said. “So we decided to offer the city the use of the space as a place where community service officers or bike officers can use it to park their bikes, take a restroom break, write up reports, and keep an eye on the street.”

LIHI would provide the space to SPD at a “nominal” cost, Lee said.

The Frye Apartments, located across the street from Prefontaine Fountain and fenced-off City Hall Park, used to have a mini-precinct on the first floor, Lee said, but the space was occupied until recently by Aladdin Bail Bonds.

A spokesman for Harrell, Jamie Housen, said the mayor’s office “is in early stages of considering what a neighborhood precinct could look like. We are continuing to explore all options for enhancing public safety downtown, including a more permanent police presence.” The two LIHI buildings “have been offered as potential options, but are by no means the only locations being considered,” Housen said.
A spokesman for the Downtown Seattle Association said the DSA would welcome a permanent police presence downtown.“As we’ve seen over the past month, dedicated resources along Third Avenue have led to a safer, more welcoming environment. Sustaining this effort is essential for the people who live and work along Third, and it’s critical as more workers and visitors return to the heart of the city. … If a mini-precinct is an element that will help enhance safety, then it should be welcomed,” the spokesman said.

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2. Interim King County Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall, one of three finalists for the permanent sheriff position, would have to attend the state’s 19-week-long police academy and be certified by the state Criminal Justice Training Commission if she’s selected and confirmed as sheriff; during that time, an undersheriff chosen by Cole-Tindall would serve as sheriff, King County Executive Dow Constantine’s office confirmed.

Cole-Tindall, 57, mentioned the requirement during an interview with members of the press on Tuesday. Although Cole-Tindall attended the state’s Basic Law Enforcement Academy decades ago and is a commissioned officer, she spent most of her career outside of law enforcement, working as an investigator for the state Employment Security Division and the county’s labor relations director before joining the sheriff’s office as head of the Technical Services Division, which oversees a miscellany of operations, including courthouse security, the automated fingerprint ID system, and the county’s 911 system.

“[When] I went through [the police academy] 30 years ago, I was 30 years younger,” Cole-Tindall said. “And it’s a lot… It’s doing firearms, Taser, traffic stops—things that, as a police administrator, are not things I would be using on my day to day job.” Cole-Tindall said she would also have to pass a physical assessment test that includes “pushups, sit-ups, and squat thrusts” before entering the academy.

A spokesman for King County Executive Dow Constantine said that when the county has a permanent sheriff but the sheriff is unavailable, an undersheriff assumes the job. Although Cole-Tindall appointed Jesse Anderson as interim undersheriff when she became interim sheriff earlier this year, she could appoint a different undersheriff if she becomes permanent sheriff, and that person would then serve as sheriff in her absence.

Constantine will nominate a permanent sheriff in early May. The other finalists are Maj. Reginald Moorman from the Atlanta Police Department and Killeen, Texas police chief Charles Kimble.

criminal justice, legislature, Police, State of Washington

What Became of the Legislature’s Big Plans for Police Reform?
Washington State Capitol (Creative Commons)

By Paul Kiefer

At the beginning of the legislative session in January, police accountability appeared to be front and center on many legislators’ agendas. By the time the session ended last Sunday, lawmakers had narrowed a broad array of police reform proposals to a core list of bills that expands the state’s role in police oversight and tactics, although some efforts to address gaps in police oversight—particularly police union contracts—fell short.

The agency that will play an enforcement role in the legislature’s police reform efforts is the state’s Criminal Justice Training Commission (CJTC), a group of civilians and law enforcement officers appointed by the governor that has the power to issue—and revoke—licenses to work as a law enforcement officer in Washington. On Sunday, the legislature sent a bill to Gov. Jay Inslee that will expand the CJTC’s authority to investigate officers for misconduct and suspend or revoke their licenses, a process known as decertification.

The legislation, originally sponsored by Senators Jamie Pedersen (D-43, Seattle) and Manka Dhingra (D-45, Bellevue), empowers the commission to discipline officers at their own discretion; under prior state law, the CJTC had to wait until a law enforcement agency fired an officer before considering whether to revoke the officer’s license, which allowed problematic officers to transfer to new agencies to escape consequences for misconduct.

Lawmakers passed new restrictions barring police officers from firing at moving vehicles, prohibiting judges from issuing so-called “no-knock warrants,” and limiting the contexts in which officers can initiate car chases or use off-leash police dogs.

The law will also require law enforcement agencies to report any serious use-of-force incidents to the commission, as well as any misconduct allegations or criminal charges of which their officers are found guilty. The commission would use that information to identify officers whose misconduct is serious enough to merit disciplinary action, including decertification.

Notably, the bill will alter the CJTC’s makeup, reducing the number of law enforcement representatives on the commission from ten to six and increasing the number of community representatives from two to seven. In total, the commission will grow from 16 to 21 members; other additions include a civilian police oversight expert. Members of the public will also be able to search a new CJTC database to track officers’ disciplinary and employment history. Continue reading “What Became of the Legislature’s Big Plans for Police Reform?” →