Chief defends editorial about police assaults, shootings

Police-related deaths have claimed headlines over the past year, especially those that highlight the aspect of race in the incidents. After a recent shooting in Olympia, a local police chief spoke out, lambasting such headlines.

Related: Police chief: ‘You don’t get to assault police officers’

“One of the points that I wanted to make was that a police officer has a gun on his or her hip, and they can’t lose the fight, they can’t go down,” Bremerton Police Chief Steve Strachan said, noting that if officers lose that fight, their gun can be taken which leads to further problems.

“I’m not excusing anything that officers do wrong, but I think we should have as part of this conversation that it is not OK ever to assault a police officer,” he said.

Related: Olympia officer shoots two assault/shoplifting suspects

Chief Strachan spoke with KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien Thursday morning in the wake of his highly publicized editorial in the Kitsap Sun titled “My Turn: You don’t get to assault police officers.”

The opinion piece states that the recent shooting in Olympia has been misrepresented in the press, and that ultimately, despite many examples of police doing something wrong, there are more examples of police doing it right, and therefore, it is never OK to assault a police officer. Strachan makes another point clear: That an Olympia officer never shot two young men for shoplifting, rather, he responded to a report of an assault; shoplifting was the lesser crime. The officer only fired his gun because he was first attacked, the chief wrote.

“If folks read the column I think that they will see that I am not blindly excusing everything police officers do,” Strachan said. “When the media reports a headline that says ‘Olympia officers shoot two unarmed men for stealing beer,’ I don’t think we can characterize that as anything but misleading.”

“People say that ‘well, that’s a minor crime, why would somebody get shot for shoplifting beer?'” he said. “The incident, based on preliminary radio traffic, was there may have been an assault. That is really an important point.”

Strachan expanded upon his editorial while speaking with Ross.

“It came from a conversation one of our officers had. He met with some kids at a middle school,” Strachan said. “One of the kids asked him ‘is it OK to fight an officer is fighting you?'”

The officer asked him to be more specific. The kid asked if an officer is arresting you, is it OK to fight him.

“The young man said, ‘you know, I view it as if you get into a fight or a scuffle with an officer, it is no big deal,'” Strachan said. “Shouldn’t we be sending the message a little bit stronger that it is not OK to have a scuffle or a fight, or to assault police officers. I think that is some common ground we can all agree on. Maybe that can move us forward instead of having this very polarized discussion right now.”

Chief Strachan also told Ross that the notion that an unarmed suspect is not dangerous is not accurate, and that situations with unarmed suspects may still be cause for using a firearm.

“There is really no such thing as a minor scuffle with an officer,” he said.