Last week, Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl said his department had a new strategy for fighting crime. Because all that community frustration over slow Spokane police response? His department feels it, too.
But he believes his plan to take officers from other parts of the department and turn them into general patrol officers will help fix that.
"This will increase the number of patrol officers that are out on the streets, which will reduce response times to calls," Meidl said.
There is, of course, a downside: fewer neighborhood resource officers and a much smaller traffic unit. Meidl hopes that with upgraded radar equipment on police cars, every patrol officer could do a little traffic enforcement.
As Mayor Nadine Woodward stood by his side at the news conference where he announced the new strategy, Meidl praised her "infallible support."
The Spokane City Council? Not so much praise coming from Meidl.
That could be because City Council President Breean Beggs and other council members are wary of the new strategy — noting how much neighborhoods have been begging for better traffic enforcement.
"We're going to let them see how this new system works," Beggs says of the police. "I'm just skeptical that it's going to work."
The Spokane City Council was touting its decision to pass a budget that used a slew of traffic-calming funds to explicitly hire nine more traffic officers.
By contrast, the council took money from roughly six unlikely-to-be-filled patrol positions and spent it elsewhere in the police budget.
"It is contrary to our priorities," Meidl said later in his office. "If I were to try to honor what they did, it would come at the cost of patrol because they now have to pull nine officers off patrol to fill those traffic positions."
In practice, the difference may ultimately be symbolic — the police department does not expect to be able to recruit and train enough new officers next year to fill either all the open patrol officer positions or the newly created traffic officer positions.
Still, it shows how the council's vision for the police department has diverged from the mayor's, creating a series of skirmishes between the city's executive and legislative branches.
Councilwoman Lori Kinnear argues that they don't want to just be a "rubber stamp for any department."
Council members point out the budget they passed actually funds more officers than the mayor's proposal did.
"In no way do I want to dictate to Craig Meidl how he should run his police department," Kinnear says. "My job is to be supportive. But it's also to ask questions."
Meidl doesn't want to be seen as complaining. He's not arguing the council has defunded the police — though he believes the money still falls short of what they need. It's more that the council is saddling his department with roadblocks, caveats and additional mandates.
Woodward, meanwhile, sees an ongoing series of attacks on her executive branch authority and argues that the City Council should defer to the chief's expertise.
"Those of us who don't have expertise in policing should rely on those who do," Woodward says, arguing that the problem is "the amount of time that the department seems to be under the microscope."
Beggs, a longtime police reform activist, says elected leaders should have oversight of police.
"Police are unique in that they have the legal ability to grab people and put people in jail and kill people," Beggs says. "They're the only department that can do that."
Fights about a city council's oversight of the police have traditionally focused on use-of-force policies or the independence of the police ombudsman tasked with sifting through officer-involved shootings and other controversies.
But more recent battles between the mayor and the council have been decidedly more focused on the logistical aspects of the job — about where the police work, how many are assigned to which unit, and whether their police cars are electric or not.
"At times our legislative branch is saying, 'Well, we know, you think that's what's going to help you keep the community safe... but we have a different view,'" Meidl says.
DRUG BUYBACKS OR ANTI-DRUG PROGRAMS?
In fact, last fall, a disagreement over how the police department could use their money had Meidl urging the council not to approve extra money for enforcement. The council wanted the department to spend $125,000 of its "civil forfeiture" money — seized by police from drug crime suspects — for anti-drug youth education programming.
"We felt that getting at the root causes would be better," Kinnear says.
But Meidl wanted to use the vast majority of it to money for confidential informants, drug buys and vehicles.
"Are we spending money just because it makes us feel good, but there's no scientific data to show it's going to be effective?" Meidl says.
Kinnear argues that there wasn't any data that the police department's current use of the money was effective either.
Eventually, the council decided to tap into another pool of police department money to fund anti-drug youth programs. But for Meidl, there was another entire level of frustration. Every department had plenty of scrutiny on civil forfeiture funds, but his peers didn't have to try to jump through city council hoops.
"There is no other department that I am aware of in the state that has a city council that tries to influence, mitigate or control how they spend their [civil forfeiture] money," Meidl says. "Nobody else in this state has any issues with that."
EAST CENTRAL PRECINCT
The mayor, meanwhile, has sometimes seen the council's scrutiny as an assault on her own authority. Last year, she was particularly incensed about an ordinance that challenged her decision to locate the South Police Precinct in the former East Central Library building.
In August, she argued that the council's ordinance was "dangerous," "retaliatory" and continued the council's "consistent attack on the independent authority of the office of mayor."
The council passed the ordinance, anyway, 5-2.
"I made the executive decision to move our officers there," Woodward says now. "It's important to note that the decision was made at the request of the community."
There was a ton of support within the East Central neighborhood for locating the police precinct in the library. The neighborhood council endorsed the proposal. So did the local business district. It was the top vote-getter in an unscientific survey. The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center had been a passionate supporter of the police precinct, warning in a December 2021 social media post that "this is where the narrative starts to change and your voices get silenced."
But there had also been other voices in the community, like the Carl Maxey Center and the Hispanic Business/Professional Association, which wanted to use the space for a Hispanic Community Center. When Woodward made her "executive decision," some on the City Council felt railroaded.
Kinnear says her problem with the mayor's decision wasn't because she objected to a police precinct. It was about responsible budgeting and using the empty library in a more profitable manner.
"You have, essentially, five to seven desks in this enormous space," Kinnear says. Additionally, she says, it was about a fair process.
Meidl is skeptical.
"They're saying that they want there to be a process," Meidl says. "But that process seems to be selected based on what they want the outcome to be. I'm just being honest with you."
"My mouth about hit the ground. You want us to put together a community group of folks that you pick to tell us which scenarios we're going to train our officers on?"
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PULLING OUT THE RUG
Toward the end of our interview, Meidl pulls out a sheet of notebook paper and shares a few other examples of council interference with the department.
For example, when the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission wanted to pay most of the cost of a virtual training simulator for the department, Meidl says some on the council initially wanted to select community members to be in charge of selecting the simulator scenarios.
"My mouth about hit the ground," Meidl says. "You want us to put together a community group of folks that you pick to tell us which scenarios we're going to train our officers on?"
And Woodward says council members were even scrutinizing carpet replacement purchases in the police training facility.
"We had a couple of council members who decided that they need to go over to that facility and inspect the carpet to see for sure that it needed to be replaced," Woodward says. "When I say 'micromanaging,' that's an example."
But it sounds less absurd when Beggs fills in the context. He says that state money was specifically supposed to be used for training related to statewide police reform, not carpet upgrades.
"It's because they were misusing, in our opinions, the funds," Beggs says.
On top of that, he says the council wanted to meet with the Legislature to convince them to make Spokane a regional training center, which would have resulted in an entire building upgrade.
Beggs says the police approach can sometimes resemble that you-need-me-on-that-wall speech from the film A Few Good Men.
"They're like 'We'll tell you what we need and how much. Give it to us,'" Beggs says. But Beggs says the council has to consider the entire city, not just one department.
On Monday night, the council passed a resolution laying out the timeline for deciding what to do about the library building — and explicitly allowing for the possibility that, after the process is completed, the police precinct might stay in the building.
Meidl, however, isn't waiting on instructions from the council. "Right now, we have no intention of moving out," Meidl says. ♦
This article has been changed to show that the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission wanted to help pay for a virtual training simulator for the Spokane Police Department.
