Olympia sets up police accountability webpage, plans town halls on racial justice

The Olympia Police Department explained new efforts to provide more information to the public, and led a crash course on its approach to the use of force, de-escalation training, crowd control and response to protests at an Olympia City Council study session last week.

Over the course of a nearly 2-1/2 hour virtual meeting Wednesday evening, Police Chief Aaron Jelcick, Sgt. Matt Renschler and officer Paul Evers walked the council through the ways in which OPD trains officers to use de-escalation tactics when possible, how it differentiates between a peaceful protest and an unlawful assembly, and ways in which it plans to be more transparent with the public going forward.

One such tool is a new “Police Accountability & Transparency” page on the city website that includes information on the Olympia Police budget, links to annual reports detailing the use of force, and other department data.

Olympia also will host four town halls, likely in a virtual format, beginning July 23 that will look at subjects including the justice system through the lens of racial justice.

“We are going to overcompensate in the effort of transparency,” Mayor Cheryl Selby said as part of her closing remarks, during which she thanked the OPD for sharing its perspective on recent events.

“There’s no way that we as council members can second-guess what you guys are experiencing out in the field,” Selby said.

In an interview Friday, Jelcick defended the OPD’s use of tear gas on protesters in the immediate unrest following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody, the event that set off a firestorm of racial justice protests nationwide and in Olympia.

Department guidelines list items such as tear gas and hard foam projectiles for use only against persons suspected of felony-level crimes.

“The nights that we utilized those irritants, our officers were receiving rocks and bottles and all of the other projectiles being thrown at them,” Jelcick said. “It’s very hard to see it from the perspective of an officer on the front line. … Those were anything but a peaceful protest.”

Crowd control

At Wednesday’s study session, Jelcick said his department has adjusted some of the ways in which it responds to the protests. Officers assigned to monitor the events no longer dress in helmets and plastic shields because they believed their appearance served to escalate the crowd response.

If direct impact munitions such as rubber bullets are used, officer Evers said, the intent is to take the people targeted into custody.

“The Olympia Police Department makes no distinction between protesters and counter-protesters,” Evers said. “Any group that wants to be out there peacefully can do so. Any group that goes out there and causes damage, destruction and hurts people draws our attention and causes us to have to react, whether it be protesters or counter-protesters.”

Armed groups have followed protesters in recent weeks, at times provoking heated conflicts and raising the spectre of violence. A rash of what were referred to as late-night “smash runs” by around 50 people have raised tensions in recent days.

Jelcick said the police department is using every tool it can, including extra overnight patrols and surveillance footage from impacted businesses, to put a stop to the late-night vandalism, which has resulted in significant property damage downtown and on the west side.

The City of Olympia released a statement Wednesday calling the perpetrators a “destructive mob with no visible purpose other than to destroy property.”

During the study session, Selby called on people to take personal responsibility for their actions by removing themselves from situations that have the potential to devolve into criminal activity. Selby’s home was vandalized during one late-night protest, which gave a personal edge to her statements on Wednesday.

“Things are different now, these last 30 days and the last two weeks especially are different,” Selby said. “There are groups out there on both sides on the political spectrum that want to cause problems.

“We need to hear from people, but these actions that are happening now are not ones you want to be involved in, and we certainly do not want to associate the Black Lives Matter movement with these actions that are happening.”

Use of force and de-escalation training

At the study session, Police Sgt. Reschler covered the 8 Can’t Wait initiative released by police reform group Campaign Zero and how OPD policies stack up to the eight reforms the initiative says can reduce police violence by more than 70 percent.

Changes such as banning chokeholds and mandating a duty for officers to intervene if another officer is using unnecessary force against a suspect are already codified by the OPD, but others give the department pause.

Renschler pushed back against the 8 Can’t Wait suggested policy requiring law enforcement to exhaust all options before shooting a person, because forcing officers to rattle through a litany of less-than-lethal tactics could delay intervention to the point of endangering themselves or the public.

“I don’t think these are tools to address the issue of experience of a person of color or an indigenous person getting pulled over and being concerned there’s a greater risk of things escalating in a traffic stop,” council member Clark Gilman said. “This is reform about being less likely to reform somebody as part of an interaction, but I think there are other measures we need to take to get to unbiased, impartial policing.”

Olympia Police added to its de-escalation toolkit last year when it purchased a restraint system known as a WRAP, which allows officers to control combative suspects using heavy straps and sleeves.

When fully deployed, the WRAP system has handles that allow officers to carry a suspect into the back of a police car or onto a gurney for transport to the jail or hospital. Renschler said he was at first skeptical the device would work, but that it’s been effective in reducing injury to both citizens and officers.

“This is a situation where officers would get kicked,” Renschler said. “We’ve lost officers for several months with various damage to their knees. It’s very difficult to get someone who doesn’t want to get into a small police car, or even an SUV — it’s very difficult to force someone into a car without using additional force.”

Implicit bias training

Chief Jelcick told The Olympian on Friday that the Police Department would be open to a citizen review board or another form of outside oversight as part of efforts to reform the local justice system. The city already has agreed to create a human rights commission in the coming months, and that could be followed by discussions about what such a police oversight body would look like.

The potential for adding implicit bias training to the onboarding process for incoming officers was raised by council members Jessica Bateman and Jim Cooper.

Jelcick said it is not a guarantee that new hires would receive more than the four hours of implicit bias instruction included in the curriculum at the state police academy prior to hitting the streets in Olympia. Active law enforcement officers can take a variety of additional courses offered by the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission and other organizations, if they have time.

“There are hundreds if not thousands of different topics that police officers train on,” officer Evers said. “Trying to find the time — and it’s not an excuse, but it’s a fact — trying to find the time to train officers may take years to get everything trained into them.”

The Olympia Police Department offers implicit bias training on a yearly basis, but new recruits may only be with a training officer for three or four months after first going through training tailored to OPD.

Bateman told Jelcick on Wednesday that if officers are receiving additional use of force training, they should be getting additional implicit bias training at the same time.

“We have two training days each month,” Jelcick said Friday. “The implicit and explicit bias training is active training, meaning there are scenarios and a question-and-answer period, which are good to do in a group setting. So it’s good for our folks to hear different perspectives, rather than reading a book or watching a video.”