Some Olympia City Council members discuss creating a human rights commission

As protests against police brutality and racial injustice enter their second week in Olympia, the Olympia City Council appears likely to reopen debate about forming a local human rights commission and a citizen board responsible for oversight of the Olympia Police Department.

Some members of the council have conferred amongst themselves and with city staff in recent days about how to approach those issues as calls for reform have risen against the backdrop of the death of George Floyd, a black man who died while being restrained by Minneapolis police.

The city council has in the past considered establishing a commission to review current and proposed city policies through the lens of equity and justice, and a human rights commission could take on a similar charge, council member Renata Rollins said. She said a referral for the general government committee to examine those proposals could come in a matter of weeks.

Council member Lisa Parshley said she’s spoken with Rollins, council member Dani Madrone and City Manager Jay Burney about both possibilities. Burney has told Mayor Cheryl Selby about the talks, Parshley said.

“My idea is to task our government committee to scope out the human rights commission and how we would populate it with an appropriate representation of a cross-section of our community that includes people of all backgrounds,” Parshley said.

“It would then turn around into us looking into forming a police review commission, but have the human rights commission envision what it looks like. I’m white, so it would be difficult for me to say ‘Here’s what I think we should do for civilian oversight,’ but I think we start with a human rights commission, while we will still have a lot of other tasks and things we need to do in government to rectify systemic racism.”

Rollins took aim publicly at the status quo during the most recent council meeting on Tuesday, when she repeated calls from protesters to disarm and defund the Olympia Police Department, overturn a 2014 ordinance that increased penalties for certain drug offenses within downtown zones, and pass an ordinance requiring landlords to show just cause to end a rental agreement.

Asked on Thursday to expand on her statements, Rollins said she only intended to amplify the messages she’s received from local residents and seen arise from demonstrations across the United States, but that the power wielded by police unions and inadequate arbitration proceedings for officers accused of wrongdoing requires close scrutiny.

Interim Police Chief Aaron Jelcick did not return messages seeking comment.

“If those are truly the barriers we are facing for systemic change, I think it should be on the table to divest funding from the police department to community-based safety programs and social services, as well as reducing the levels of force,” Rollins said. “I understand our department doesn’t receive military-grade equipment, but things like flash-bang grenades, I don’t think those have a place in our community.”

Mayor Pro-tem Jessica Bateman said Thursday that looking at how the Olympia Police Department applies its funding is “a valid discussion to have.” She cited her concern about a pattern seen nationally of divestment from social services and support systems at the same time law enforcement spending takes up increased portions of municipal budgets.

Parshley and Madrone did not go so far as to call into question the funding needs of the Olympia Police Department, but each stated their desire for increased transparency from the department. Both also noted the potential for the council to consider whether some services currently under the umbrella of OPD could be spun off to other departments or a public-private partnership with local nonprofits.

“What I see is that we’ve put a lot of society’s needs onto the police department,” Madrone said. “They aren’t mental health professionals, they aren’t drug counselors, but they’re being asked to fill some of those roles. I would like to see us investing in programs to remove those sorts of things from the police department. If that results in us needing fewer police officers, that’s just a byproduct. It’s not necessarily an attack on the police.”

Not in question among council members is the need to have heavy involvement from members of the African-American community and other minorities in budgetary debates and crafting the parameters for new commissions.

Rollins and Bateman each stressed the need for council members and city staff to build personal relationships with those underserved groups by showing up to their events and taking time to understand the distinctive reasons for their need to be heard.

Parshley echoed their sentiments. “We’ve given nobody any reason to trust the white community,” she said.

“Just because we don’t have high levels of diversity doesn’t mean we don’t have the responsibility.”

The issue of long-term changes came up at a news conference Mayor Selby held on Friday morning as well.

Selby acknowledged that people of color in Olympia don’t trust the police department, calling it “painfully obvious.” She called for people of color and historically marginalized communities to come to the table with city council to discuss and design new policies.

“The work ahead for the city council, administration, and public safety officers is clear: We must dig deeper and work harder, but we can’t do that in a vacuum,” Selby said.

She said the city began “addressing the plague of systemic racism in law enforcement” after Bryson Chaplin and Andre Thompson were shot by Olympia Police officer Ryan Donald in 2015. Since then, Selby said, the police department has undergone reforms including extensive training in racial bias and de-escalation, and the city voted to tax themselves to fund the police department, setting up programs like its Crisis Response Unit.

“Yet despite this progress, more comprehensive action is needed and progress moves at the speed of trust,” Selby said.

In a question to Selby, The Olympian mentioned specific actions proposed at recent rallies — an independent council to review cases when police use force, terminating officer Donald, more comprehensive hiring and training practices, addressing alleged mishandling of the investigation into Yvonne McDonald’s death, and Rollins’s urging disarming and defunding the department — and asked whether she could name specific actions under consideration.

She said she couldn’t, because the city’s “in the middle of a crisis” and that’s why she’s calling for people to come to the table, but said she signed a “mayor’s pledge” from Campaign Zero that includes several policies that will be on the city’s list of options.

“You’ve named some very significant cases that we need to take a look at again, and I promise you we’ll do that,” she said.

Olympian reporter Sara Gentzler contributed to this report.