Editorial: What do we want police, deputies to do?

By The Herald Editorial Board

Allow us to make a prediction: A year from now you won’t be reading a headline in The Daily Herald that says anything about either the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office or your local police department having been disbanded with hundreds of officers being sent to the unemployment line at the behest of the “Defund the Police” movement.

Regardless of whether you see that as a good or bad outcome, it’s not going to happen. For three reasons:

1. In almost all cases, especially locally, that is not what’s being proposed;

2. On its own, it’s not what is going to resolve the systemic inequalities and abuses within law enforcement and the criminal justice system; and

3. These are decisions that are up to local decision-makers, the people you elect and who represent you and your wishes on policy and spending.

All of that should be the take-way following six hours of debate via a well-attended video conference before the Snohomish County Council, as reported Thursday by The Herald’s Rachel Riley.

As the county council considers an amendment to the county budget to address an expected $27 million revenue shortfall caused by the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, much of Wednesday’s discussion centered on whether the sheriff’s department and the jail would face the same level of cuts as proposed for all other county departments.

The cost: It’s a significant question because county law enforcement and the jail represents about 42 percent of the county’s 2020 budget; the court system amounts to another 29 percent; 71 percent all together.

During the discussion, Councilmember Saw Low, one of two Republicans on the five-member council, offered amendments that would have partially exempted the sheriff’s department from the cuts other departments faced. That drew a counter proposal sought by county public defenders who want to see about half of the sheriff’s office spending redistributed to housing, counseling and social service programs.

Ultimately, the council adopted a budget amendment that should avoid layoffs of county employees within all departments, but that shouldn’t sidestep further discussion about law enforcement and criminal justice reforms. Already, there’s recognition of that. Jared Mead, the newest arrival on the council and a Democrat, acknowledge as much.

“We’re going to do this again. And we’re going to do it the right way. And we’re going to have some reforms,” Mead said.

And those reform discussions should be taken up not just by the Snohomish County Council but by city councils as well.

The backdrop for last week’s discussion is emotional, and for good reason. We are all part of a national conversation now prompted by the sometimes-violent demonstrations and sometimes-violent police response that followed the abhorrent and steady drip of deaths of African Americans and others at the hands of police, most memorably that of George Floyd, the Minneapolis man who suffocated under the knee of a veteran police officer on Memorial Day.

That emotion is driving the urgency to deal with these matters, but it could also complicate the discussion if we allow it to drive us into competing camps where we refuse to listen to good ideas.

What it means: Despite the unspecific and unhelpful moniker of “Defund the Police,” the basic idea behind those three words should be embraced by all who want to see their tax dollars spent efficiently and justly. How do we best use the resources available? Those ideas deserve calm — but determined — discussion.

Those on the county and city councils — also facing daunting budget constraints — can start with one basic question: What responsibilities do we expect of law enforcement officers?

Though you wouldn’t suspect it from watching local TV news and crime dramas, violent crime in the U.S. is down significantly over the last 30 years, declining from 758 incidents per 100,000 people in 1991 to 381 per 100,000 in 2018 — that’s nearly half — according to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program. For Washington state, that rate is 311 per 100,000, 28th lowest among the 50 states.

Even so, we do need law enforcement to respond and investigate violent crimes when they do occur, in particular homicides, rapes, assaults and domestic violence.

The job description: As with our public school teachers, we have added new responsibilities to the job description of law enforcement officers over the years, especially as we have had to address the often-related issues of addiction to opioids and other drugs, mental illness and homelessness. It’s fair to ask if there aren’t more effective and perhaps less expensive ways of addressing those particular issues.

For example: Should police be our de facto mental health response service?

A survey by the national Treatment Advocacy Center of more than 350 sheriffs’ offices and police departments found that 21 percent of law enforcement staff time was spent responding to and transporting people with mental illnesses and represented about 10 percent of department budgets.

A good fit? Communities throughout Snohomish County have seen great success through programs that have paired social workers with police or deputies; allowing those teams to direct those with needs related to addiction or mental illness to treatment beds and other services, rather than a revolving and much more expensive door of arrest, booking, jail and release.

That responsibility fell on law enforcement by default, in part out of a desire to begin the program as quickly as possible and because police already were responding to those calls. It’s time to look at revising this program, perhaps pairing social workers with paramedics, rather than police.

We can have similar discussions regarding a range of what are now police responsibilities, including addiction, homelessness, noise complaints, animal control, parking enforcement and more.

It’s clear that at the county level some of the drive for reform — budgetary and otherwise — is in response to the leadership of the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office. That’s not without reason, but there are better ways of addressing those concerns — there are two pending recall efforts, after all — than using the county’s law enforcement budget as punishment against an elected official.

We are, as Councilmember Mead said, going to have some reforms to policy and budget. But those reforms should be driven by data; by need; by available resources; by the interests of equity, fairness and justice; and by what responsibilities we want our law enforcement officers to address in our communities.