Greg Nickels, Mayor  SEATTLE POLICE DEPARTMENT R. Gil Kerlikowske, Chief of Police

March 6, 2003

Speech of Gil Kerlikowske, Chief of Police
Delivered to the Rotary Club of Seattle

Chief Kerlikowske was the keynote speaker at a Seattle Rotary Club luncheon held at the Seattle Sheraton Hotel.

Thank you for having me this afternoon. It is a pleasure to be with you to discuss some of the challenges to and changes in the Seattle Police Department.

The Mayor has provided firm direction and support for the department and its most important asset: the men and women in the organization. We share a vision of a department that will better prepare its leaders, increase training, and is more accountable and transparent.

To give you some idea of what the challenges are, I would like to repeat some words that were offered to this club by another speaker. He said, "We are struggling to shake off the vestiges of parochialism and insularity in the way we think."

Those words were delivered to you by Boeing VP Harry Stonecipher in describing the main problem facing that global enterprise; it was not competition but its inner culture that had become parochial and insular.

If that can happen to a competitive giant, I submit that same thing can happen in my profession, one in which we have, or think we have, a monopoly on our product.

Similar to medicine and technology, more change has occurred in and to policing over the last 25 years than in the 75 years preceding. Those changes have been positive.

Our personnel are better selected, better educated and better trained. They use far less force than at anytime in our past. Crime across this country is at the lowest level in 30 years.

And thanks to several federal programs we have more advanced equipment and technology. Science is also playing an important role. DNA analyses are not only solving cases once thought unsolvable but also resulting in the freeing of individuals who were innocent of the crime for which they were incarcerated.

But at the same time that we take such pride in helping to make far safer communities, policing is facing increased levels of scrutiny and review. And, the defining measure of performance for a law enforcement agency has been raised to a level of near perfection.

Unfortunately this is not a rating that an organization whose day-to-day mission involves rapidly changing and complex interactions which people can achieve. These situations involve:

Remember that in these situations we are called in after every other social, medical, and governmental safety net has failed.

Our police forces must also deal with other complex political and social problems. September 11 demonstrated to our local communities that the first line of defense in homeland security is the local police department and we are also the first to protect civil liberties.

I have never been more proud of this department than on September 11 when the officers rushed to locations within Seattle that may be vulnerable to a terrorist attack because it is our urban centers that have been the focus of terrorist threats.

While protecting critical infrastructure, we also quickly began a process to protect the thousands of Muslim Americans and Arabs who were frightened by individuals expressing hatred for them-hatred that was completely unwarranted. Our officers were recently honored at a dinner held at the Idriss Mosque for the protection they provided.

Another challenge, for the police and our city, is managing demonstrations. Managing and demonstrations by the way are mutually exclusive words.

Since Seattle is well known as a center of demonstrations, the police are often put into the position of "damned if we do and damned if we do don't." We experience up to 200 demonstrations and events a year. The majority of those never make one word in the newspaper or 30 seconds on the evening news.

To some extent, therein lies the problem.

Although many of the individuals and groups involved in these events clearly want to stay within the law and express their point of view, others follow this dictate: "If you can't force the police to use tear gas you won't get on CNN."

The problem of managing these events becomes more difficult because those that want to violate the law and destroy property hide and operate within the crowd of demonstrators who act peacefully.

Unfortunately, the police force is a blunt instrument. There is no effective system to surgically remove the law violators. We have no laser-guided systems to extract the person destroying property and leave everyone else untouched.

On another front, we are currently engaged in a process through the City Council to develop a system to collect data so that we can understand and answer questions about racial profiling. Racial profiling means that the police stop someone based solely on their race or ethnicity.

The department has engaged in three major efforts: Helping to develop and better understand data collection, a pilot program utilizing video cameras in patrol cars to record what occurs and what is said during a stop.

And a variety of outreach mechanisms to improve communication by the department with the community, including a well-attended meeting entitled "Discrimination or Discretion" that was moderated by KOMO Commentator Ken Schram.

All of these challenges return me to my opening remarks that our greatest problem as an organization is our insularity and the difficulty we have in making change. One academic who has studied policing extensively remarked that "changing a police department is like bending granite."

This change involves making the department more accountable and more transparent. Any problem in any large police department is quickly reported across the country. Because of that we have to understand the importance of being direct and open in our communications with the public and with the media.

I would like to give you an example of our relationship with media. When I was sworn in as Chief in August of 2000, there was a reception that followed. Quite often, although not always, the first day for a chief is usually pretty good.

After I took my hand off the bible I was ushered away to a small private luncheon. When I asked why my wife and I were not attending the reception, I was told I could not be there because the media was present.

Now, we hold press briefings, often within 24 hours, after any critical event. I am extremely proud of the changes we have made in this area.

These briefings are done to provide the public with as much factual information about the incident as we can. We stress that the investigation is still in its early stages and that no conclusion has been reached.

We also stress in the cases of an officer's use of force, that several thorough investigations are conducted including a departmental review board, which examines the evidence and includes a citizen member appointed by the Mayor.

It is important to understand that police officers are in reactive modes when they use force. To ensure public safety and to protect the community, officers in Seattle, as elsewhere, are trained to gain control of the situations they encounter as quickly and safely as possible.

Fortunately, incidents involving police use of force are infrequent. Their relative infrequency, however, intensifies their significance as singular events. This makes them more difficult to interpret and understand.

Nationally, it is estimated that just less than 1 percent of citizen-police contacts involve the use of force. And the majority of the force used is the officer's using his or her hands to restrain someone.

In Seattle, the use of force is even lower than the national percentage. Only 617 incidents or .13 percent of responses to dispatched calls, traffic stops, and on-view events that occurred in the year 2000 resulted in the use of force. Again, the majority of those incidents involved an officer restraining someone.

SPD ranks behind most other large jurisdictions, as well as other large city police departments when rates of fatal uses of deadly force are compared using a variety of measures.

The department has also implemented the use of less lethal weapons, particularly an electronic stun device. As with all technology, there are failures. We would all like to see the type of device that was used in the television series Star Trek. Captain Kirk would just order his officers to "turn your phasers to stun" but no such device exists.

An improvement to the department is the Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) that was enacted in 1999. No one had been selected to fulfill that role until I became Chief a year later. This office today is directed by Sam Pailca, who is not a police officer. The office, still in its early stages, reviews and certifies internal investigations to the Chief of Police. The OPA is in addition to the outside auditor, who reviews all internal investigations. The auditor has been in existence for nine years.

The OPA still preserves the Chief's role in final decisions on internal investigations and discipline. In many ways OPA continues to fulfill our sworn obligation of making everyone unhappy.

Officers are concerned because the OPA director is someone who did not come from the profession of policing. Some groups on the other hand are disappointed because they believe the OPA should be an independent and external function.

With these challenges however comes much to be proud of:

We must continue to pursue a course of change, one that is often difficult, even painful, that positions the department to fulfill its primary mission:

"Prevent crime, enforce the law, and support quality public safety by delivering respectful, professional, and dependable police services."

While this core mission does not change, the department must change. Not only to be more open about what we do-because we have a good story to tell-but to be more open when we make mistakes.

And those good stories are not just acts of courage or heroism. A young officer dealt with an older woman who was constantly calling the precinct, often just to have someone to talk to. That was fine when it was not busy but too often they did not have time to talk.

The officer contacted a local group that restores old computers. They gave her one and today she is on someone else's chat line. A unique way to solve a problem.

We must also be entrepreneurial and operate more efficiently as a business, a business with a $160m budget and 2000 employees.

That is why we have formed the Seattle Police Foundation, a 501 c3 that will assist the department in gaining help and assistance from the Seattle community, because it is a community that supports the department and wants us to be successful.

The current labor tensions we are undergoing are not unique to us. Police departments from Kennewick, WA to Washington, D.C. , and from Little Rock to Los Angeles have undergone this stress.

But the fear of change and the fear of controversy should not dissuade this department from continuing a path of improvement. As Mayor Nickels said when he swore me in, it is not the chief's department or the Mayor's department, the SPD belongs to the people of Seattle.