Submitted by Linda Hood, University Place.
The WA state legislature passed landmark police accountability bills during the 2021 legislative session. The killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor highlighted the need for a change in police culture and training.
These bills contain many common sense measures, for example banning choke holds and no-knock warrants as well as requiring the use of de-escalation techniques. I have been very disappointed in the attitudes of some of our local law enforcement to the passage of these bills.
Unfounded assertions have been made about the effect of the police accountability bills, designed to create fear in constituents. For example, Olympia Police Chief Jelcick stated in an interview in The Olympian “Under 1310, officers can only respond to calls reporting crimes, not ones requesting wellness checks or other “community caretaking”.”
Other law enforcement members have made similar statements, including University Place Police Chief Premo, who in a newsletter states “some calls we will no longer respond to at all and the response to some other calls will look much different.” The newsletter was later edited to remove this statement.
A memo from AG Ferguson’s office debunks these claims in no uncertain terms: Law enforcement should discuss the actual provisions in the bills, not misinformation intended to provoke fear.
At the same time, our state government is making it harder to protect yourself. Interesting how that works.
So, what is the misinformation you are talking about? I’ve read the bill. I see nothing inaccurate in what you quoted.
So there is no correlation between the increase in crime, and the leftists coddling of criminals over police officers? No correlation between number of vacancies in a department and the twofold punch of Referendum 940, and the latest neutering of police and increase in violent crime, property damage crime, and murder?
The author demonstrates exactly how history not only repeats, but it rhymes. She is a UP, middle class, white (I’m sure) 21st Century Marie Antoinette. “Just let them eat cake”.
What does AG Ferguson’s office have to do with the actual implementation of a law? How many of them have been law enforcement officers?
If you could be sued, lose your job, go to jail for trying to do your job–or you could just sit back in your car what would you do?
Were you wearing two masks when you wrote this piece? The problem with crime is that we have too many laws that are not criminal. Let’s start with the war on drugs. The war on drugs should end yesterday–all drugs, make them legal–but the authoritarian mind which wants vaccine mandates, masks everywhere, schools to be shut down (safetism run rampant) is the same mind that makes laws for others.
Liberty is at the core of our nation, but that means responsibility is assumed before rights. They are baked into the equation. It is implicit, but since our schools have dumbed everyone down, that must now be explicitly explained.
I’ve thought a lot about the current s***show in our country. The problem is philosophical. One philosophy is based upon personal responsibility, the other is based on blame.
One is celebrating the ‘most successful airlift in history’, while the other is worried for Taiwan, our American’s left behind (those brown people are obviously not the right hue of brown to protect), and the $85 billion in weapons we gave a terrorist organization.
Let them eat cake.
Ms Linda Hood,
Please stop your misinformation about misinformation.
Your comment about choke holds is inaccurate. While your positon regarding not using choke holds is accurate and easy to support, your error in including the carotid artery hold as a choke hold is misguided.
The way misguided individuals desire to throw out chokeholds has been likened to throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Then there is the loss of reasonable suspicion as an investigation crime stopping tool. That is a pathetic uninformed move
Lastly, law makers and some citizens who are blind to common sense want police officers to measure and evalate a susbject’s intent. That means we need to fire any police officer who has not developed the ability to telepathically read a subject’s mind like the Carnack the Magnificent on the Johnny Carson show.
Should we work for change and improvement? Certainly. But the changes in the works are bound to generate unintended consequences. The changes you support, not a critic’s words are what will become the generator of public fear.
Joseph Boyle – Lakewood Resident 51 years / Former police officer 23+ years.
We would have better laws if lawmakers opened their ears and minds to ALL constituents instead of their freight train style of “my way or the highway.” It is past time for lawmakers to sit down and listen to law enforcers and make modifications to this new law. I trust our Lakewood police and fire chiefs and they are faced with some real barriers.
The problem is we have laws passed without much input from those who we pay to enforce them. The most recent mistake is to change the law from “reasonable suspicion” to “probable cause.” There has been ZERO reporting on how this was supposed to protect a s better serve society at large, making us more safe. Seems to me it serves the criminal element and was enacted simply to appease those vocal groups who believe a certain segment of society has been mistreated.