A Citizen’s Right To Police The Police

Police officers are vested with virtual life-and-death authority. That, Spokane Police Chief Terry Mangan has said, subjects them to a higher standard of conduct than other citizens.

In spite of that, he has conceded, police officers, being human, sometimes err.

In fact, out of 117 misconduct allegations against Spokane officers in 1996, the department’s internal affairs unit decided 20 had merit. There is comfort in knowing that the police department is willing to acknowledge fault. It helps build trust in law enforcement agencies.

But if it’s possible for cops on the beat, in their fallibility, to make mistakes, it is also possible for their superiors to rule incorrectly on misconduct complaints - perhaps one of those 97 allegations they decided lacked merit in 1996.

That’s why Spokane has a Citizens Review Commission. That’s where a person like Christopher Ostrander can turn if he feels the internal affairs process made a mistake.

Ostrander, a Lincoln County farmer, says an undercover Spokane officer used excessive force when arresting him following a traffic stop in January. The Police Department rejected Ostrander’s complaint but the commission thought it should advance to the City Council’s Public Safety Committee. That committee agreed, unanimously, that the case requires further review.

Mangan, however, says the commission went too far. Only he can discipline officers (something the commission doesn’t really dispute).

Now the stage is set for an impasse between an obdurate chief and an accountability structure that was meant to look at misconduct complaints through a second, independent set of eyes.

Bear in mind that the seven-member review commission includes a former police officer, a retired judge and the daughter of a former FBI agent. And City Councilman Jeff Colliton, a member of the Public Safety Committee, is the son of a former Spokane deputy police chief. The structure is not tainted with anti-police bias.

Although the Rev. Lonnie Mitchell, chairman of the review commission, believes Mangan wants the process to work, the chief appears as unwilling to embrace this commission’s independence as he was with its ineffectual predecessor, the Citizen Review Panel.

The chief’s attitude shows no signs of relaxing, but he is scheduled to retire next summer.

The council and city manager should find a replacement with a more progressive outlook.

Mangan has many accomplishments to his credit - the community-oriented policing movement, for example - and the next chief should sustain them. But the value in a partnership between community and police is diminished without a process that promises citizens a credible appeal in those rare but inevitable instances when human police officers err.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Doug Floyd/For the editorial board