Rantz: Seattle officer’s termination was a big PR play

It’s difficult to imagine Seattle’s Chief of Police fired officer Cynthia Whitlatch for anything other than improving community relations, KIRO Radio’s Jason Rantz says.

Whitlatch is accused of bias and escalating a situation much further than it should have gone when she arrested an elderly man using a golf club as a cane. The man she arrested is black, she is white.

Rantz believes Whitlatch’s actions during the confrontation do not justify her firing. Instead of giving both sides a fair shake, O’Toole decided to take the route that would look best for the Seattle Police Department. There’s already an anti-police attitude in the city, Rantz says; that must have weighed heavily on the decision.

“This particular case — involving bias, abuse of police discretion, and escalation of a contact that should have been resolved without any confrontation — is of great concern to the Seattle community and the Seattle Police Department,” O’Toole wrote to Mayor Ed Murray and the Seattle City Council.

Whitlatch’s termination was recommended after an internal investigation. She claimed William Wingate, then 69 years old, threatened her with a golf club as she drove past him on Capitol Hill.

O’Toole and others are crying bias in this case because she’s a white officer &#8212 accused of making racist remarks &#8212 who arrested a black man for no other reason than carrying a golf club. But Rantz suggests people look at the interaction between the two in 2014 in a different way: She’s a woman asking a man to cooperate, and he is refusing. It sounds like the Wingate chose not to listen to Whitlatch.

“Just as easily as you can call it racism, I can call it sexism,” Rantz said. “She’s also a lesbian, so there you go, it’s homophobia, too.”

It’s a political firing, Rantz says. The PR nightmare the arrest caused blinded O’Toole from doing the right thing. Rantz is convinced that O’Toole and others sat around a table and pro/conned the situation. When “they” determined it would be better for the department to fire Whitlatch, they chose that. So, from a community relations point of view, they did the best thing.

“If we’re looking at this from a PR standpoint, they are right,” Rantz said. “It’s too hard to fight that battle, but it doesn’t mean it’s the fair thing to do.”

It’s not completely over for Whitlatch, at least not yet. The police union plans to contest the decision.