‘I was arrested:’ Olympia City Council members share their own interactions with police
Olympia City Council members talked about their personal experiences with law enforcement at an unusual session on Tuesday.
The discussion, facilitated by Kerensa Mabwa, a consultant from The Athena Group, was a preview of what the city will be asking community members to do in the coming months, as its Social Justice and Equity Commission convenes a series of focus groups with specific marginalized sub-populations.
To varying degrees, council members put up their own experiences as collateral, yielding some emotional disclosures about being arrested, pulled over, or witnessing acts of violence.
As the city approaches the one-year mark of its attempts to re-imagine policing, the uncommon display of vulnerability from officials read like just the beginning of the process. Here are some of the things they said.
Dani Madrone talked about going downtown with the walking patrol, who she credited with good faith efforts to make it a place that’s welcoming to everyone.
“I see a lot of care, a lot of understanding of the population that they’re working with, a lot of wanting to build relationships and figure out how to make downtown work for people who are downtown,” she said.
But Madrone also shared a story of a less positive encounter with the police that happened to her years ago. She said that it’s not the only one, but the one she’s “willing to share.”
“When I was very unstably housed, a very, very stressed-out time in my life, I got pulled over. It was the first day of school. I was driving my daughter to pre-school. I was going 28 [mph] in a school zone, so I thought I was going 3 over the limit, it was actually 8. And I got pulled over, and I had a panic attack. And that officer — this is an Olympia Police Officer who has since retired — yelled at me to calm down. And, um, that didn’t work [laughs]. It hardly ever works to yell at somebody to calm down. ... He gave me my ticket and then told me that I made my daughter cry.”
Madrone then paused, and began to tear up as she continued.
“And, um, that’s not the only time I’ve witnessed or experienced something like that, and I know there’s a lot of change going on in terms of police training for de-escalation, but those are real experiences that I know a lot of people have had.”
Jim Cooper said his image of law enforcement was influenced at a young age by growing up around a firehouse in Edmonds where “the police came and did their paperwork.” He described his high school and community as “very, very white” and as a consequence he wasn’t aware of things such as racial profiling until he was old enough to start watching the news.
“Then I went in the military and the chemical operations folks shared the same barracks with the military police, and then I had a job where it was my job to advocate for school resource officer funding; I was in the first DARE class in Washington state. All of that privileged relationship brought me to this place where I had a perception about who police are.”
As an adult, Cooper said he’s been lucky not to have experienced the justice system.
“I haven’t had to engage with police in need thankfully, because of my privilege. And I know that’s not what this is about, but the stories I hear from friends who are people of color, particularly around how they’ve been cast and treated, its totally unacceptable.”
“I’ve spent my life more as a part of groups who are on the receiving end of police services rather than people who call the police for protection,” said Clark Gilman, who described working as a union organizer and a peace activist, with a formative experience at the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999.
“My strong perception is that the police force is to protect property, that that’s their job is protecting property, both real estate and people’s personal property.”
More recently, Gilman said he has worked as a paraeducator with students of color who experience “extra scrutiny” when moving through certain parts of town. “I believe that’s still a real thing that happens every day here in Olympia,” Gilman said.
Lisa Parshley shared a story of being arrested under false pretenses while she was a student.
“It was in vet school, and I rear-ended someone on campus,” Parshley said. “It was because a dog ran between me and the car in front of me and I didn’t see the person stop. And I took, we exchanged information and everything, and I went on to class.
“I was pulled out of class by two officers and taken into custody and arrested. And no one — they wouldn’t even allow me a lawyer. And finally my husband was able to get the DA to get me released. And the DA finally threw all the charges out because it was figured out that the officers knew who I was because I actually didn’t [sic] exchange information, and that it wasn’t a hit and run, and that the person wasn’t hurt.
“But this officer confessed to saying that he felt he had to teach me a lesson, and that I didn’t understand the gravity of what happened, and that I was just a young woman that was not terribly intelligent. So while I’m not a person of color, I was treated pretty poorly at that moment, and it, if I hadn’t had an advocate like my husband, who knows where that could have ended up with a felony.
“And the funny thing is, at that moment, I actually visualized the police department as something scary. And that is my moment of empathy for someone who has to live every single day with the fear of being pulled over by a policeman. So that, I can understand that this is a system that has the power to cause such harm.”
Parshley also told a story about witnessing police officers talk a man down who had climbed atop a statue downtown.
“I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop in town. And I looked across the street to a gentleman who was climbing our statue outside of the city hall. And he was screaming and throwing things at people walking by, and he was threatening people. And up came a squad car across the street, probably not 50 feet away from this person, and the two officers stepped out. One just stood on the side towards the person and the other walked away from the car, away from the person. And the police officer standing, engaging with this person didn’t get any closer, just started talking.
“And then pretty soon this person is not yelling, is not throwing things, is starting to climb down off the statue. And the police officer walked half the distance to them. And by the time this whole ordeal was done, the police officer was helping this person right his cart, fill it up, and help him down the street. And not once was a gun raised, not once was there a bad thing happened.
“So this system also has such great power to do good. I think we have to find a way to bring out the bad and find the barriers and help make that better so that we can actually see what the good could be.”
Renata Rollins and Yến Huỳnh both said they don’t call the police except as a last resort.
“This is a hard one to talk about in a public forum for sure,” Rollins said. “When I need services, I don’t call the police. The last time I did was several years ago. There was a really scary sounding domestic violence situation in a house next-door to where I live. And um, and I knew that there were guns in the house. And it was just like this terrifying scream, and so I, and I was like, you know, faking calling and told them like, please do not give any indication that I was the one who called, please do not come over and talk to me about what happened.
“And then I was sitting in the – it was really dark out – I was sitting on the porch, um, and I could hear the police dealing with the situation, and then they walked right over to my door. So, that’s the last time I’ve ever called the police.”
For the most part, Rollins said she thinks we can evolve past having “armed agents of the state” responding to emergencies, but allowed that there are some cases where they might be useful.
In one incident several months ago, Rollins described that “there was somebody in an apartment above one of the businesses, some kind of domestic violence involving a gun. And you know, in that moment, I was glad that there was some, there was like a trained force available to respond,” Rollins said.
“So it’s complicated.”
This story was originally published April 28, 2021 at 10:01 AM.
.jpg)