Shortsighted?

Less than two months into his job as Spokane’s first-ever police ombudsman overseeing officer conduct, Tim Burns is already irrelevant.

Sure, the pony-tailed former police officer has been crisscrossing the city to meet-and-greet everyone from peace activists to police officers. He’s looking for office space outside City Hall to make people more comfortable about coming to see him. And he has so far taken 22 complaints or inquiries from citizens.

But he is largely ignored in the continuing battle to add independent investigatory powers to his job description — a fight that started two years before he was even hired.

Ten days ago, the City Council voted 6-0 (one member was absent) to urge the mayor to negotiate for investigative authority in contract talks with the police union. This at the same meeting where Burns testified he didn’t want it. At least not yet.

The continuing push is fueled by the sense that people have been sold out. Breean Beggs of the Center for Justice notes that independent investigative power was among the 55 recommendations in the 2007 Pailca Report (written by Sam Pailca, who was the Seattle police ombudsman at the time) that provided the framework for Spokane’s ordinance.

The independent investigative part somehow vanished when the city and the Police Guild negotiated the creation of the ombudsman office, but, Beggs says, city officials assured him it would come back when the contract next opened for negotiation.

“Which is now,” he says.

In the last two years, however, the economy has tanked. Seattle police negotiated a pay raise in exchange for accepting independent oversight, Beggs says, but that was in better budget times. Spokane is projecting multimillion-dollar deficits for the next several years and Mayor Mary Verner has said she may have to cut 22 police jobs before the end of this year, making it unlikely, Beggs surmises, for the city to seek an extra concession.

That’s exactly right, says the mayor.

“We really need the assistance of the guild to balance the 2010 budget, and we need permanent savings because the economic outlook is not good for future years,” Verner says.

The investigatory powers issue can come up at any time and doesn’t have to wait five years until the pending contract expires, she says.

“We can request,” Verner says. “We can’t unilaterally open a contract and we can’t unilaterally insert items into a contract. That’s why it’s called negotiation.”

Verner is also doubtful that a ruling this month by the state’s Public Employment Relations Commission to allow Seattle to tweak its police oversight without having to bargain with its union would have straight-across application to Spokane.

It’s possible the ruling sets a precedent, she says, but “I know [PERC] takes each question and its context with its own set of facts.”

Beggs disagrees. In the Seattle case, PERC quite clearly ruled that as long as a new aspect of civilian police oversight has no role in disciplining officers, it is not considered a “change of working conditions” that must be collectively bargained.
Spokane’s ombudsman has no role in discipline, so adding a new wrinkle to the job description would likely be allowed by the PERC ruling, he says.

Chris Vick, a labor attorney representing the Spokane Police Guild, says otherwise.

“I was there at the trial,” says Vick, who also represents the Seattle Police Guild. The specific issue was whether the oversight commission, already sworn to confidentiality, could review reports without having information blacked out for privacy. “It gave them more information that they couldn’t disclose,” Vick says, which is different than giving an ombudsman power to independently question parties in a complaint.

Verner, meanwhile, says she has asked the city’s negotiating team to broach the subject of adding investigatory powers to the contract talks, but prefers to wait.

“It sounds reasonable to me that we have to allow the ombudsman program to mature a bit before we amend it. We finally have independent police oversight — I’d like to let it grow,” she says.

The union’s stance remains unclear. Det. Ernie Wuthrich, president of the Spokane Police Guild, says he has yet to speak with his membership about adding more power to the ombudsman, since it hasn’t been formally proposed. He notes, however, that the guild did overwhelmingly vote to accept the creation of the ombudsman office.

“[The ombudsman] can sit in on interviews, he can ask questions of the complaining parties and the witnesses. He’s involved in the investigation, so I’m not sure what investigatory power they are talking about,” Wuthrich says.