South Seattle Cop on N’hood Policing, Media Non-Response & Gutting the Gang Unit

By South Seattle Cop

If you’ll remember a few years back Seattle announced that everything in the Land Of Oz was at peace, the birds were chirping, the butterflies were gently drifting on the breeze, and thus the politically undesirable SPD Gang Unit could now be gutted from just under 30 detectives working 3 shifts to a grant total of 4. (the fugitive unit and other follow-up units endured similar cutbacks). Rejoice! We had achieved Utopia.

This announcement came on a Tuesday, following what was at the time (and possibly still) the bloodiest single weekend of gang violence in Seattle that anyone could find on record.

During that weekend as one shooting led to another, news crews and SPD’s PIO, Duane Fish, kept meeting at crime scenes and talking about the incidents on the phone. Duane suggested that instead on Monday they all meet downtown at the PIO office, and he would meet them all together with all the information at once. They liked that idea.

Come the following Monday the reporters showed up, as did Duane armed with copies of the redacted reports for public release, and answers for questions after talking to many of us on the shooting cases. The reporters got their stories, the public was informed.

Duane was promptly yanked into an office with SPD Captains and Chiefs, and read the riot act. They were furious that he, the Public Information Officer, was providing the public with information! They told him that he should have checked with them first because the next day they planned to publicly announce cuts to SPD and tell the city that all was well.

Duane was never a downtown type, he was a cop at heart, and being in the PIO office had not dulled his sense of integrity or his IQ, as it has to others. His response to this sit-down of made-men (Gold badges and gold trim around SPD shoulder patches) of the downtown family was perhaps not as humble or respectful as officials that high up with ego’s as large as theirs would have liked. They felt he was not a team player. He was immediately fired from the PIO office and declared persona non gratta at SPD HQ. He was reassigned down to South Precinct (where we rabble-rousers and labeled trouble-makers are often sent) as a detective, where he promptly got to work closing cases and arresting dirtbags…police work.

When the announcement of the cuts came on the Tuesday after the bloody weekend, there were murmurs and raised eyebrows, but no public outcry.

Also announced was the elimination of the Community Service Officer unit, and cuts to crossing guards. The CSO’s were a great resource who specialized in victim assistance, juvenile issues, civil processes, non-criminal reporting, and other non criminal police activities where a sworn officer was not really needed to handle something. They were able to follow-up with kids and families on certain issues, and were able to provide access to a variety of kinds of resources and assistance. With the elimination of this unit the load on patrol officers was substantially increased as they now have to handle these situations along with everything else.

I later handled a vehicle vs. pedestrian accident that tied up half a dozen units for hours. It probably would not have happened if a crossing guard had been on duty. Which was cheaper?

Interestingly one unit was not cut. The PEO’s! Parking Enforcement Officers do write parking tickets, but there are many other types of support to police operations they provide that free up patrol units to move on to other things. PEO’s provide support to traffic management at major events as well as accidents, as well as keep our neighborhoods from turning into junkyards, and keep heavy-traffic thoroughfares clear during peak traffic times. Also they could be brought in to help deal with problem locations (drug houses generally do not come with on-site parking lots).

However Hi$ Roundne$$ the Fat Clown, Mayor McChee$e, only saw PEO’s as useful for one of the two things he understands: self-promotion and revenue. So the PEO unit was increased. But along with that increase came a new directive that PEO’s could not respond to help patrol units with traffic control at accidents without a commander’s approval. Apparently preventing further accidents and injuries by helping traffic navigate around obstacles and hazards was not as high on City Hall’s priority list as revenue (safety is a secondary or tertiary concern downtown until someone’s staff member is killed crossing the street, and then suddenly it’s priority #1). Don’t expect such a response from City Hall if YOU get hit crossing the street.

So now more patrol units are needed to safely handle and clear traffic accidents. The more severe the accident, the more units will get tied up with it.

Eventually it started to leak out that all was not as well as the City wanted people to believe, and they started examining options. The logical choices to reinstate the various follow-up units, and increase staffing, were unpalatable. They presented to dual problems of having to admit to the citizens they were mislead, and also having to pull money out of frivolous pet projects to fund public safety. Neither was acceptable to the crowd downtown.

Someone hit on the idea of “Geo-Policing”. Originally designed as a template for small agencies that had grown to a point where they needed to deploy police based on geography and needed to adapt to how larger agencies implement community policing, it was sold in Seattle as some wild new breakthrough in policing that was going to cure all our crime woes (in reality it was an method Seattle had evolved past years ago to a better community based policing model). Somehow without adding more officers, the new plan would magically make response times shorter, and allow officers more non-dispatched proactive time to focus on problem spots. However, aside from the fact that the deployment maps we were already using were community oriented into districts based not only on crime but geography (key to response times), the other issue was the plan called for a substantial increase in SPD staffing. When the consultant who designed the plan learned that the brass intended to implement the plan using current staffing levels, he quit the project, taking with him the city’s right to use the term “GeoPolicing”. The term Neighborhood Policing Plan (NPP) thus took it’s place. There was no stopping this ball once it got rolling. Several senior managers were already planning to tout it on their own résumé’s when they applied for Chief positions in other agencies, and jobs in the private sector, after leaving SPD.

In the end what they did was increase the size of the districts, so that each sector would have 3 sub-districts instead of 5. This gave the false impression on paper of a higher density of officers per district, which would then be used to support claims of faster response times, more time for proactive work, etc…all claims the city then made. What happened was the district boundaries were dramatically increased in size. But in reality it’s the same territory, same number of officers working it.

Those few gold-badgers who refused to “drink the Kool-Aid”, and thus are not part of the in-crowd of made-men downtown, have let it leak to us lowly knuckle-draggers that there is serious talk about what to do now that the NPP is internally recognized, even at the top, as an absolute failure. The problem is, any change would be an admission of failing to heed the ample information and advice given ahead of time from within and outside SPD that it was a bad idea. Thus, a conundrum.

Indeud: I don’t know if I have a good solution to the problem for you. I can provide you an inside look into what is going on, but my voice does not count as far as the city is concerned (ever wonder why officers are not allowed to talk to the media, only PIO’s and senior ranking folks can do that?). And it’s been made clear to me several times that an officer’s perspective is not wanted by local TV/Radio/Print media.

Advice offered to the Mayor or SPD’s management level folks from officers and detectives in the Sergeant level and below (the ones actually policing your streets and nieghborhoods) is disregarded as fast as it is sent. The latest example was when the Guild told the Mayor that we didn’t think John “Shotgun Johnny” Diaz was an appropriate choice as interim Chief. That sealed the deal that he would be selected. In all fairness, Rich O’Niell should have been smart enough to realize that would happen ahead of time…but that’s another topic.

What I see as I watch what the City does and gets away with is that no one calls them on what they do. Some people grumble a little initially, but the city knows that will blow over soon, and it always does. Eventually everyone just goes along with it…

And let’s face it: the soon-to-be-former Mayor won SE Seattle in the vote!

See you on the streets!

P.S. Duane Fish is no longer with SPD.

More from South Seattle Cop:

• South Seattle Cop: Mayor’s Gun Ban Illegal, Unenforceable & Potential Civil Rights Violation (10/16/09)
• South-End Scenes: Chickens at Othello Station (10/9/09)
• South Seattle Cop on Kids, Gangs, Violence & Self-Hate (10/2/09)
• First RVP Comment of the Week Goes to… (8/15/09)

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