For the final installment of the Renton Reporter’s series on police use-of-force and community relations, we look at the police perspective on some of the issues raised in the series.
Officer Mark Coleman has been with the Renton Police Department for 11 years and Police Guild president for four years in two separate two-year terms. The guild is Renton’s police union and has 99 commissioned police officers and 29 non-commissioned members.
In the wake of several high-profile, national cases of police use-of-force, the Renton Reporter sat down with Coleman to get his response to the issues raised by members of Renton’s African-American community in the previous stories of this series.
Overall, Coleman said his experience with the department has been a good one and he described the department as “a very close-knit organization” of “comrades.” He also said that a case similar to those that have exploded nationally could happen anywhere and that Renton’s officers are a diverse unit, who have each other’s backs.
But his responses do show a rift in perceptions between the guild and some Renton community members.
On the one hand, community members said that while Renton’s police are getting it right most of the time, more could be done to reach out to communities of color. Police administration has echoed the same sentiments with regard to community outreach and hiring.
However, according to Coleman, Renton’s force is plenty diverse and would respond to any given situation the same way regardless of the demographics of the department.
PERCEIVED THREAT AND RACISM
Coleman wanted to stress that any person, “even an unarmed teenager, could become an imminent threat” to an officer or another person anywhere in America.
“Once a person becomes an imminent threat to another’s life, then the possibility of lethal force does exist based on the facts and circumstances that are immediately in front of the officer,” he said.
Coleman took issue with the mention of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman in the series because he said they have nothing to do with the police or community relations with the police. However, to the African-American community members interviewed for this series, perceived systemic racism is the link between these recent cases of young African-American males, reflected in the protest slogan “Black Lives Matter.”
All of the African-Americans interviewed for this series spoke of a community mistrust of the police built on institutional racism in this country. Black youth, in particular, feel threatened for their safety around officers, according to youth advocates.
When asked how the Renton Police Department deals with this mistrust, Coleman had the following to say:
“Our officers responded to over 70,000 calls for service in 2014, most of the calls coming from 911 dispatch. If that many people are calling our department for help, then I must believe that the Renton community has trust in us.”
Given the circumstances, Coleman said, the community is treated “non-confrontationally,” which he said is the department expectation.
“If you’re responding to a domestic, for example, you know you’ve got someone who’s assaulted or fighting,” said Terri Vickers, police guild board member and department spokesperson. “It doesn’t matter if they’re black, white, or purple, or green, you have to respond the same way.”
A QUESTION OF PROACTIVE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
As to how far officers go to engage the community, Coleman said that, of course officers get out of their cars, but how often they do that as outreach is done at the officer’s discretion.
“A lot is left up to the officer to be proactive, whether that’s doing traffic, or doing business checks, or walking through the schools, or trying to do proactive patrols in parks,” he said. “A lot of that is left up to the determination of the officer and how they patrol their patrol district.”
For Renton community activist Kenneth Williams that line of thinking isn’t good enough.
In speaking about local police officers, Williams, who works with the organization People of Color, said officers “don’t want to talk to them (black youth) and until the police start getting out of their cars and mingling with the people and actually talking to them – and going to these community centers and working with these kids – it’s not going to change,” he said.
Williams said that Renton has done a better job with its Police Department than some, but it is still perceived as predominantly white and unrepresentative of the community.
HIRING IN 2014
In 2014, Renton had 15 openings in their commissioned police force. They were able to fill nine of the vacancies.
Eight white males were hired for entry-level police officer positions and one white male was hired for an experienced officer position.
There were more than 600 applicants for the entry-level officer positions, with 421 white applicants, 34 African-American, 49 Asian, three Native American or Alaska Native, eight Hawaiian or Pacific Islander and 36 Hispanic applicants. There were 61 applicants of two or more races or of unknown race total.
The opening for the experienced officer got 34 total applicants, with 24 white applicants, one African-American, one Asian, two Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, four Hispanic and two applicants of two or more races.
On the non-commissioned side of the department, Renton hired an Asian female for its community program coordinator vacancy, a white male as a new crime analyst and a white female evidence technician. There were only six applicants – one Asian and five white – for the coordinator position.
There were 174 applicants for the crime analyst position: 10 African-Americans, two American Indian or Alaska Native, 14 Asian, two Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 10 Hispanic, 107 white and 29 who either didn’t identify, were of two or more races or were unknown.
The evidence-technician vacancy received 195 applicants, of which 17 were African-Americans, 121 white, one American Indian or Alaska Native, 12 Asians, 12 Hispanics and 31 unknown, of two or more races or who did not reply.
DIVERSE ENOUGH OR NOT?
The guild has no responsibility for hiring or recruiting for Renton’s police department, but Coleman said that he feels no matter what the make up of the department is, officers would still respond the same way to the community.
“And as I’ve said, we have a very diverse and ethnic community amongst the men and women of the Renton Police Department,” he said. “No matter how that diversity is, whatever its makeup is, we’re blind to color within the department. We work as a team. We have all of each other’s backs. It doesn’t matter what your background is, who you are, you know, we are comrades.”
Of Renton’s 113 commissioned police officers, 92 are white, seven are black, 12 are Asian and two are Hispanic officers. The demographics for the department’s non-commissioned staff shows a similar spread. There are 30 total, with 24 white staff, two black, two Asian and two Hispanic staff members.
When asked again if he thought Renton’s department needed to be more diverse to reflect the community, Coleman said:
“What I’m saying is no matter who applies, who gets hired, no matter how diverse our department is, I’m very confident that we would be a very close-knit organization, who cared about each other, who cared about the community, who cared about all the different cultures in our community.”
SOLUTIONS
For activist Williams, the solution to the disconnection between police and the African-American community is simple.
“I just see room for improvement,” Williams said.
He would like to see an even more diverse Renton police force, officers who proactively talk to the community, more extensive training and the replacement of any bad apples on the force.
“If they can’t do any of those things, they’re wasting our time,” Williams said.
The Police Department’s solution to the disconnection is an open invitation to attend its Citizen’s Academy. The academy is a 12-week community outreach tool to give the public an insider’s view of the department and its operations. According to Vickers, it’s been well-attended since it started in 1988.
“We’ve held 53 sessions of our Citizen’s Academy,” she said. “It started in 1988, so it is a program that is interested and I believe appreciated, but it certainly gives a great opportunity for the community, for the public to understand law enforcement and for them to share their concerns.”
Vickers said the majority of the public doesn’t get to see the complexity of a law enforcement officer’s job because they sometimes encounter police on their worst days, when they’ve been the victim of a crime or involved in an accident.
“I think years ago that the perception of police officers was that they were, you know, you had to be big and you had to be strong and that was what was important,” she said. “But what’s important in law enforcement today is that you have to be smart. You have to understand case law. You have to be able to make good decisions quickly based on experience, training and what the law is.”
The next Citizen’s Academy starts in March.
