Murphy misfires again

In her letter of July 9, once again Mary Ann Murphy misrepresents facts and shows her obvious bias. I did submit an oped in which I acknowledged my apology for any harm my March 2015 op-ed caused. This paper chose not to publish the same.

The research by Dr. Byrnes was not “sidelined” as she alleges, but, in fact, after lying dormant under the last two chiefs since March of 2015, one of the last matters I attended to as law enforcement director was to initiate the process whereby the Spokane Police Department would join with the SRLJC and restart the research on a city/county basis as part of the McArthur grant. I believe that an analysis of the entire county serves as a better research platform.

Finally, had Murphy bothered to check her facts, she would know that the delay in the Procedural Justice Training was at the behest of the Department of Justice, not the mayor or myself, because DOJ is short of resources and they felt that several other police departments needed the training sooner than the Spokane Police Department. Facts do matter.

Jim McDevitt

Spokane