By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
The City of Seattle Office of Inspector General (OIG) announced the final set of recommendations issued by a Panel assembled for a community-centered Sentinel Event Review (SER) of incidents during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
According to OIG, “OIG identified distinct ‘waves’ of protest activity throughout that summer. This report is the Panel’s analysis of ‘Wave 4,’ covering events between July 2 and October 7, 2020, and concludes the 2020 protest review series. Protest activity occurring after this time involved decreased arrests, reported force, and reported conflict between police and protestors, and thus no ‘critical incidents’ were identified for review in Wave 5.”
The Panel discussions were co-facilitated by the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, a criminal research and policy hub at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, and by PointOneNorth Consulting, an organization specializing in peacemaking and conflict resolution. The SER brought together a diverse group of community members and SPD representatives to examine root causes of poor policing outcomes and identify opportunities for systemic improvement.
“This report is the result of countless hours of work by the panel,” says Inspector General Lisa Judge. “As well as an unparalleled commitment to building trust between panelists. SPD and community members participated in a years-long process of giving and receiving constructive feedback and engaging in tough conversations around race and policing in our community. We appreciate their commitment to providing sustainable recommendations to SPD to improve its protest response in the future.”
The SER panel identified 20 recommendations designed to improve SPD’s response to protests in the future. They fall into five main areas:
• Community Legitimacy – Addressing the gap between structural and perceived legitimacy and acknowledging the need for SPD to take accountability for its actions and the actions of individual officers when public trust is damaged.
• Situational Awareness – Acknowledging the need for SPD to change its mindset when responding to protests, particularly where police themselves are the focus, by minimizing the prevalent belief within SPD that protesters work as a unified, oppositional group, rather than a diverse population of individuals with a diverse set of reasons for attending the protest.
• Communication – Improving the ability of SPD to communicate with protestors, media, and legal observers to safely facilitate crowd events.
• Tactics – Improving SPD crowd management tactics to limit force and ensure safety for protestors, officers, and others in the area.
• Officer Wellness – Supporting officer physical and emotional wellness during periods of extended deployment by reducing shift lengths and offering sufficient opportunities for breaks, food, and water, as well as through the provision of mental health services. Section IV provides a complete list of recommendations.
The recommendations include “improving the message” by implementing a staging area for media where possible, developing a process to identify a visual signal for media to obtain from SPD and wear as identification, exploring other policies and practices from other jurisdictions regarding media presence at protests and events to incorporate best practices, and working with a diverse range of local media outlets to identify best practices for facilitating observation.
In order to improve crowd management, the panel recommends SPD should:
• Task POET officers with identifying certain protestors as point people and coordinating direct communication.
• Station POET officers strategically within crowds of protestors to communicate with officers on the front lines and to provide information about the crowd’s ability to move back, and to safely facilitate such movement.
• Station POET officers in police vehicles equipped with LRAD to effectively communicate with the crowd.
SER also recommends that in order to increase accountability, SPD should evaluate current use of force reporting during protests and largescale events to ensure accuracy and sufficient level of detail, including requiring explicit justification for each instance of force used and prohibiting the use of “boilerplate” justifications, and ensuring officers complete reports in a timely fashion.
“This report is the culmination of an in-depth, community-centered review of the Seattle Police Department (SPD) response to sustained protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder,” according to the OIG officials. “Beginning in the Fall of 2020, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), in collaboration with community members and SPD, conducted a series of Sentinel Event Reviews (SERs) to identify contributing factors resulting in critical incidents causing community concern in the 2020 protests. This fourth and final report focuses on crowd management tactics utilized by SPD in response to three significant protest events occurring between July and September.”
