Drug users, vagrants stand up for Seattle cop taken off patrol

On a recent night, a group of vagrants and drug users huddled near an alleyway at 2nd Avenue and Pine Street to share stories about a certain Seattle police officer.

“Joker,” they call him.

“He’s arrested me plenty of times,” said Steve Vasquez, a 54-year-old who has frequented the downtown street scene for decades. He said he has come in contact with Seattle Police Officer Randy “Joker” Jokela more times than he can count.

What Vasquez said next came as a surprise.

“To us, he’s more than just an officer,” he said. “He represents the best of humanity.”

Officer Jokela, a 24-year veteran of the force, patrolled the streets of Belltown and Queen Anne for nearly two decades as a member of the department’s West Precinct. He was reassigned last week after a report revealed that he issued almost 80 percent of all citations given to individuals caught smoking marijuana in public.

According to numbers released by the Seattle Police Department, Jokela wrote 66 of 83 pot citations issued citywide in the first six months of the year.

While Jokela was within his authority to issue the citations, questions have since been raised about the number of tickets he wrote and whether he issued them to a disproportionate number of blacks and the homeless.

According to a department report, almost half of all those fined were homeless or lived in some sort of transitional housing. Thirty-seven percent of those given citations were black, compared to U.S. census data that shows only 8% of the city’s entire population is black.

Also of concern were notes that Jokela wrote on some of the citations.

According to the department, he called new marijuana laws “silly” and referred to the city’s elected prosecutor, Peter Holmes, as “Petey Holmes.”

Holmes was a leading advocate of I-502, which legalized recreational marijuana use. He also supported the city ordinance that allows officers to issue a $27 fine to those caught smoking or consuming pot in public.

Given the findings, the Office of Professional Accountability launched an investigation into Jokela’s actions and Chief Kathleen O’Toole removed him from patrol last week.

The news came as a shock to members of the homeless community downtown, many of whom describe Jokela as kind and fair.

“I had a couple run-ins with him,” said 28-year-old Dion, who admitted to being a convicted felon and frequently engaging in illegally activity downtown.

“To be honest, Joker is pretty fair,” he said. “He’ll cut you some slack. He’ll give you a chance.”

Dion, who is black, said he has never seen Officer Jokela, who is white, discriminate against any race or ethnicity and admits to seeing a disproportionate number of blacks engaged in criminal behavior downtown.

“He’s not racist, period,” said Kathy, a black woman who said she comes downtown nearly every night to buy drugs. “He never discriminated, he just caught me breaking the law.”

Kathy said Officer Jokela has arrested her many times, but she always deserved it. She said he has also cut her breaks, including giving her multiple warnings for smoking marijuana in public

“He’ll tell me to put it out,” she said.

Officer Jokela is also known to give homeless people in the area food and help them find shelter.

“He’s actually fed me food when I’ve been hungry. He’s taken me off the streets when I’ve been very sick,” said Vasquez, who claims he is terminally ill with liver failure.

Vasquez said Officer Jokela and a few other West Precinct officers helped him get a room at the Gateway Apartments near 3rd Avenue and Pine Street.

“When I see him, I don’t run from him. I run to him,” he said.

Ron Smith, President of the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild, said it is a shame that Officer Jokela has been taken off the street.

“I think it’s a gross overreaction,” he said. “At this point, I think the citizens downtown and the business owners are not being served as well as they were prior to this action being taken.”

Smith said officer morale downtown has taken a hit since Jokela’s reassignment.

“The message was, ‘you go out and work hard, but because it’s not politically correct, you get yanked off the street and placed at a desk job.'”

Smith said he cannot defend the fact that Officer Jokela wrote “snarky comments” on several of the citations he issued.

“There’s no place for that,” he said. “It’s a public document.”

In a phone conversation Wednesday, Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole told KIRO Radio that she visited with Officer Jokela in person, and spent more than three hours meeting with officers at the West Precinct.

O’Toole said she supports officers who are proactive and enforce laws, but is concerned with whether Jokela let his own personal beliefs about pot influence his job.

While the internal investigation process could take months, Vasquez and other individuals downtown hope Jokela will be returned to patrol soon.

“There are officers here that hate us to death, they look down on us like we’re animals that need to be locked up,” Vasquez said. “(Jokela) empathizes with us. He helps us understand ourselves better, so maybe we can help ourselves in the process.”