The Seattle Police Department’s Office of Professional Accountability (OPA)–the group that reviews complaints against the cops–can throw away its thick black pens, if City Council Member Nick Licata gets his way.
This week, Licata introduced an ordinance that will give the three citizens who review the OPA’s work (they’re called the Office of Professional Accountability Review Board, or OPARB) access to complete records. Currently, OPA investigators black out names and other identifying information from the files before handing them over to OPARB, leaving documents that don’t name the officer or the person who filed the complaint.
Licata–who heard from OPARB members like former federal ATF agent John Ross that access to unredacted files would make their role more effective–considered taking the issues to the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild (SPOG) bargaining table. But the Labor Relations Policy Committee–a group of city officials, including Licata and other council members, that decides the city’s bargaining priorities–reportedly wouldn’t put the redaction issue into play. So Licata submitted the legislation, accompanied by a resolution that will give OPARB power to make cop policy recommendations. “I want to send a clear message to the guild and the mayor,” Licata says. The ordinance will come up in the council’s police committee in September.
The issue of unredacted files came up nearly a year ago, when retired judge Terry Carroll, then the OPA auditor (the third arm of the OPA, alongside OPARB and the OPA director), recommended in his September 2002 report that review board members be given full access to the files. “To understand the system you have to see all of it,” wrote Carroll, who had access to full files. “Redacted files are not an adequate substitute for access.”
SPOG president Ken Saucier is irked that Licata is going through council ordinance, instead of taking the issue to the bargaining table. “He wants to take it out of the arena of negotiations and into legislation,” Saucier says. “That’s BS.”
Saucier doesn’t like the idea of three civilians getting full access to records with cops’ names on them. The reason the review board only had access to redacted files, he says, is so review board members wouldn’t be prejudiced against officers whose names had come up in complaints before. “If an officer makes a name for themselves for a series of mishaps, and their name comes up in a bigger incident, they’re automatically guilty,” Saucier says. “It’s not going to matter that it’s true or not–the officer’s going to get voted off the island.”
