I.D. Check
Activists Push Task Force Toward Police Accountability
Tools
To help the city look at racial profiling by the numbers, the Citizen Task Force is currently drafting a form for police officers to fill out whenever they make a traffic stop. In October, they will make their recommendation to the Seattle City Council, and data collection will begin soon after.
But the task force has been hung up on one point in the last few meetings: whether to require cops to identify themselves on the form they fill out when they pull someone over. In addition to writing down a driver's demographic information--race, age, and gender--the Citizen Task Force is considering having officers identify themselves on the form. This makes the cops nervous.
Stranger Personals
Police representatives at the meeting, like Sergeant John Hayes, are opposed to officer identification on the forms, saying it could lead to a misuse of the data collected, branding certain cops as racists or racial profilers before the information is put into context.
However, the protesters feel police have nothing to fear. In a statement delivered in the mayor's lobby before the meeting, the PCJ called for officer identification in order to rebuild trust between communities of color and the Seattle Police Department. "Individual officers, as well as the entire Seattle Police Department, must be willing to be held accountable for their individual and collective actions," the statement read. "If officers are not engaged in profiling, then they should have nothing to fear by identifying themselves."
Thanks to a May decision in King County Superior Court that opened the Citizen Task Force's meetings to the public, the activists were able to carry that message right into the meeting. Previously, the Citizen Task Force held closed-door meetings, violating the state's 1971 Open Public Meetings Act and keeping the public in the dark about the debate [see "The OTHER Closed Meetings," Josh Feit, April 26].
Lisa Daugaard, a Seattle public defender famous for taking on the city's impound ordinance, filled in for a task force member at last week's meeting. Daugaard said the PCJ's concerns echoed citizen input from previous public hearings on racial profiling. "At those hearings, citizen opinion was strongly in favor of identifying officers in the data collection process," said Daugaard, "[and was] consistent with the views expressed by those in attendance at the meeting [last week]."
As the meeting threatened to run overtime--and with the Citizen Task Force still debating whether or not to urge officer identification--one PCJ volunteer got out a notebook and marker, creating a dozen signs on the fly that simply said "vote." And eventually, the task force did. By a close 9-8 margin, the Citizen Task Force agreed to recommend to the city council that officers identify themselves on data collection forms.
It's not clear yet how officers would be identified, though name and badge number are possibilities. After the PCJ clarifies the details, finalizing a draft of the form that police officers would fill out, the whole thing needs to pass the city council. But PCJ protesters are optimistic.
"It's a good first step in the right direction, in making police accountable to the community," says Dustin Washington of the PCJ. "We still have a long way to go." Vanessa Lee, a PCJ volunteer who tried to attend the Citizen Task Force meetings when they were closed, says Thursday's meeting was a good sign. "Throughout the life span of the task force, the Police Guild has had a great deal of influence and the community has not," Lee says, noting that there are several task force members who do represent the community. "This was a great example of how, as a community, we can push ourselves into the democratic process."
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