Seattle eyes accountability fix after complaints against former SPD Chief expose gap

A trio of complaints against former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best connected to the 2020 racial justice protests sat in limbo for a month and are still pending long after she retired.

Mayor Bruce Harrell recently sent all three to an outside agency for investigation earlier this year. His office, the Office of Police Accountability (OPA), and the Office of Inspector General(OIG) all say former Mayor Jenny Durkan’s refusal to send the complaints to an outside agency are the reason for the stall.

However, Durkan spokesperson Chelsea Kellogg took issue with that characterization saying while the former mayor’s office initially supported in-house options, the Office of Police Accountability was an independent agency and could have outsourced the cases.

Mayor Harrell’s new Director of Public Safety Andrew Myerberg was the head of OPA at the time. Durkan’s office requested the Office of Inspector General look into the allegations, but OIG declined over jurisdictional and concerns about a potential conflict. OPA did conduct preliminary investigations but did not issue findings.

When the complaints against Best were filed, OPA’s operations manual didn’t allow the agency to investigate the chief, according to Harrell’s office.

Regardless, the situation has exposed a gap according to Seattle City Council Public Safety Committee Chair Lisa Herbold who is now working to remedy that with legislation in the works that was discussed briefly during Tuesday’s committee meeting.

“The bill is intended to address a technical issue from the 2017 accountability ordinance, which did not specify how complaints that named the chief of police should be addressed,” explained Herbold.

The legislation discussed yesterday includes several changes from the original based on ongoing discussions with OPA, OIG and the Community Police Commission, the three oversight and accountability arms for Seattle Police.

Herbold’s bill would establish a new process for handling OPA complaints against police chiefs, authorizing the agency to decide whether to investigate a complaint, refer it to the city’s human resources department or outsource it, with a review role for OIG and requirements for notifying of various officials.

One of the most important changes was to clarify that there is no role for SPD to play when it comes to the investigation of a complaint made against the police chief.

As for the complaints against former Chief Best, there has been no public detailing of them. However, as the Times reports, the titles of the complaints are pretty good indicators of what they involve.

· “Tear gas used after 30-day ban”

· “Sharing misinformation about crime in CHAZ/CHOP”

· “Chief lied about dispatch error during CHOP shooting”

The tear gas after the 30 day ban likely refers the controversy over Best citing an exception to the ban just two days after she and Durkan announced it. Best said at the time that the exception allowed SWAT to use it on protesters in order to “protect life and end standoff situations.”

The second complaint is likely a reference to Best repeating claims made by an assistance chief in June 2020 about businesses being extorted in the CHOP in a video she released. The South Seattle Emerald later reported that Best had received an email from a city leader debunking the extortion claim before she repeated it in the video.

The last complaint appears to refer to the deadly shooting of 19 year old Lorenzo Anderson at the CHOP in that same month. At the time, Best and SPD claimed officers could not get to the teen because they were blocked by protesters. But that claim was also later refuted when KUOW reported  what actually slowed the responders down was a miscommunication between officers and fire crews.

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