OPINION | Police Accountability Is Not the Enemy of Public Safety

The desire for social reckoning has somehow been pitted against the need for social order. This false choice makes society neither safe nor just.

by Marcus Harrison Green

(This article is co-published with The Seattle Times.)

Apparently, the shelf life of collective scrutiny around police accountability lasts as long as a hashtag's virality. Or maybe it spans the length of time we're confined to our homes during an unprecedented pandemic when video of a Black man's public execution is horrifically inescapable.

For certain, it lasted from the day of George Floyd's murder by a police officer to the birth of a narrative that pitted social reckoning against social order.

In the nuance-deprived space that is our politics, our national and local elections over the past four years have presented a false choice: either we defund the police and invite social anarchy, or we defend the police and unleash excesses of force.

Somewhere between the summer protests of 2020 and the present day, demands to hold accountable the people entrusted with the discretion to kill somehow morphed from "overdue" to "outlandish."

That isn't to defend every tactic, strategy, or slogan used to advance police accountability, but it is to say that the question around effectively addressing police accountability remains an open one. To impair conversation around it is to accept an inflexible status quo.

Most of us have returned to a mode we found ourselves in prior to the death of George Floyd, when it was far easier to tolerate unjust outcomes than give sustained attention to stubborn social ills we haven't come close to fixing.

What other conclusion is there to draw from the news that the three Tacoma police officers who were acquitted of murdering Manuel Ellis are each receiving $500,000 to walk away from the force. There was no massive swelling of protests nationwide. No public statements from shoe manufacturers. No prolonged social media blitz. It was as if it was just another Tuesday in America.

In 2020, Ellis, who is Black, was returning home after picking up doughnuts at a neighborhood 7-Eleven when he encountered police officers Matthew Collins and Christopher Burbank.

Depending on whose story you believe, what ensued was one of two scenarios:

Ellis somehow summoned the "superhuman strength" of a Marvel Cinematic Universe character and attacked Collins and Burbank, which led to them shocking, brutalizing, and restraining Ellis facedown on the sidewalk as he begged to breathe.

Or, as three other witnesses testified, the officers were ultimately the aggressors and they tased and choked Ellis, even as he surrendered.

Whatever you believe, know this: A man is dead who would still be alive today had he not encountered these police officers. His family is forever heartbroken. His daughter will grow up without a father. The officers who killed him, even if you believe they were justified, will walk away with half a million dollars, and the ability to find employment at another police department, pending a review by the U.S. Attorney's Office for Western Washington.

Perhaps that is the law. But how is that justice?

"For people who pay attention to history, it does feel like: Here's your reward for killing this Black person who brought it upon themselves and doesn't really deserve to live, almost like a bounty," said Daudi Abe, a Seattle Central College professor who teaches courses on racial justice and policing.

How about eyes on the present?

Last year saw the deadliest year of police killings of civilians in more than a decade. Police kill more than three people every day, according to Mapping Police Violence (MPV), a nonprofit research group that tracks police-involved homicides.

Two-thirds of those killed were not initially involved in a report of a violent crime. Things turned deadly only after police involvement. Yes, Black people are disproportionately killed by police and have less confidence in them relative to the rest of the country. But in absolute terms, white people total the largest number of people they kill, according to MPV data. I say that not to dismiss the racial disparity but to highlight that this is a problem that impacts all races, particularly if you are poor.

Perhaps you can't see yourself in Manuel Ellis, or Niani Finlayson, but can you in Alivia Schwab? She was a white mother who was gunned down by police after they arrived at her home to check on her. She was experiencing a mental health episode and had threatened suicide. Can you see her in your mother, or your sister, or your cousin, or your friend?

I wholeheartedly commend the work of our local organizations and organizers who have worked at the state legislative level to ban no-knock warrants and chokeholds and to pass I-940, which ultimately led to the trial of the police officers who killed Manuel Ellis. But I wonder how much those things only curb the excesses of police violence as opposed to ending them.

In the last two years, just locally, we've seen police officers mock the death of Jaahnavi Kandula, who was killed when a police officer struck her in a crosswalk while speeding. We've also seen officers who kept a mock tombstone — decorated with a Trump flag — of a Black man killed by police officers.

It all speaks to something deeper.

"That's in a break room where people go for respite. To me, that screams dehumanization but you have to understand that in law enforcement culture, dehumanization is an active part of that culture," said Abe.

In an attempt at a culture shift, Abe designed a curriculum on race and policing for the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, which certifies law enforcement recruits.

Time will tell about its effectiveness but it's a start. Accountability must be foundational to policing culture, and so must compassion, empathy, restraint, and sound judgment. Seattle will have that opportunity soon when the City renegotiates its contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild, which represents SPD officers in labor negotiations. We need public involvement in that process.

There are only hard choices in our police accountability quagmire. They'll only get harder the longer we take to make them.

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📸 Featured Image: A Seattle police badge on the sleeve of body armor of an officer clearing out the Capitol Hill Occupation Protest on July 1, 2020. Photo via VDB Photos/Shutterstock.com.