Pailca to help shape review plan

Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick called Sam Pailca “the best of the best” when she recently turned to the Seattle lawyer to help her revamp Spokane’s broken system of police oversight.

Pailca gets high praise for her work since 2001 as the first director of Seattle’s Office of Professional Accountability – created by the Seattle City Council after a wave of public anger at police misconduct in the state’s largest city in the late 1990s.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Washington State University with a law degree from the University of Washington, Pailca became the only civilian member of the Seattle Police Department’s command staff, reporting directly to Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. She also helped Denver, Eugene, King County and Tacoma set up new police oversight systems.

“Sam did a great job. Her heart was dedicated to making the system better,” said Peter Holmes, a Seattle lawyer who heads the three-person citizen review board that oversees her office. But Pailca, a former prosecutor, also lost some battles in a police culture inherently hostile to outside scrutiny, Holmes added.

As Pailca departed her term-limited job last Friday to go to work for Microsoft, stresses remain in Seattle’s new police oversight program. Critics say Pailca lacked independence, reporting to Kerlikowske and lacking a dedicated budget.

While overseeing the investigation of nearly 1,000 annual misconduct complaints and achieving some significant reforms, Pailca also leaves behind an unresolved standoff with Seattle’s police unions over the powers of her former office and the access of Holmes’ oversight board to the names of police officers under investigation.

It’s a stalemate with lessons for Spokane officials as they struggle to overhaul the police oversight system here.

In Seattle, the three-person citizen board that was supposed to oversee Pailca’s office got off to a rocky start. For two years, it delayed releasing several reports for fear of being sued by the police union or individual officers.

Backing the board last May, the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to indemnify board members and give them confidential access to uncensored police reports.

In response, the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild filed two unfair labor practice complaints.

The guild said any changes in police oversight must be negotiated in their contracts.

“They said the very act of the council passing this legislation was a refusal to bargain in good faith. To me, it’s pretty silly. But it’s a typically litigious response from the police guild,” Holmes said.

Police guilds in Washington have the legal right to have any citizen oversight provisions bargained in their contracts, said Chris Vick, attorney for the Seattle and Spokane police unions.

The Seattle guild complaints will be heard in April by the Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC), an Olympia group that oversees labor disputes in public agencies.

The same scenario played out in Spokane in the 1990s when the Spokane Police Guild and the Lieutenants and Captains Association challenged the authority of an 11-member Citizens Review Commission established by former Mayor Sheri Barnard.

PERC sided with the police, ordering Spokane in a 1995 ruling to disband the group and void its findings. A new commission was established later that year by Spokane Mayor Jack Geraghty.

That is the group that exists today. Members have no budget, no legal protection from police lawsuits and can only rule whether the police department’s review of a citizen complaint was “thorough and objective.”

That’s the board Kirkpatrick tried to use last year to review a police investigation of a neighborhood dispute involving off-duty police Lt. Judith Carl and her children.

When she took the case to the commission, which hadn’t met in a decade, Kirkpatrick was told it couldn’t act because Carl had been disciplined by Kirkpatrick’s predecessor, Acting Police Chief Jim Nicks, for using vulgar language during the incident.

That experience quickly taught Kirkpatrick that Spokane’s civilian review system “was not really working,” the police chief told a forum on police oversight at Gonzaga Law School on Jan. 30. That’s when she decided to bring in Pailca, Kirkpatrick said.

Whatever oversight model Spokane citizens decide they want, it still will have to be negotiated with the police unions, the police chief added. “Labor law governs this subject,” Kirkpatrick said.

Vick, the police union lawyer, agreed.

It’s the Spokane Police Guild’s “current legal position” that it’s too late this year to include changes to Spokane’s citizen oversight system in ongoing labor negotiations. But the police union could agree to voluntarily enter into negotiations over a new form of civilian oversight, he added.

The Spokane Police Guild’s contract expired in December 2005 and the city is in mediation with the police union now, said city spokeswoman Marlene Feist. The length of the new police contract is also being negotiated, she said.

Tim Connor, an independent journalist who has written about police issues and who appeared on the GU panel with Kirkpatrick, said Spokane should insist on a transparent system that does not cede to police unions the public’s right to open meetings and open records.

“We can’t agree to close meetings and withhold records. The people of Spokane should get the civilian oversight process they want,” he said.

The keys to effective citizen oversight are independence, budgetary clout and enough authority to obtain police records and take testimony from witnesses and officers, said Pierce Murphy, Boise’s police ombudsman and the president of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE).

Murphy’s budget this fiscal year for his four-person office is $269,000.

“Transparency is important. Within what’s allowed by law, oversight agencies should be empowered to tell the public as much as they possibly can,” Murphy said.

Last month, Murphy wrote to Kirkpatrick, objecting to a negative description of civilian oversight in a recent assessment of Spokane’s police department by the Washington Association of Sheriffs & Police Chiefs.

That report incorrectly labeled civilian oversight practitioners an “anti-law enforcement faction,” Murphy wrote.

“Effective oversight can build bridges between citizens and police. NACOLE stands ready to assist Spokane in the creation of an oversight mechanism that is fair, honest and beneficial to your entire community,” Murphy said in his letter.

Over 130 civilian agencies or appointed officials review allegations of police misconduct and evaluate police policies throughout the nation, according to NACOLE.