Decertifying police may be the future of accountability. WA leading country, still flawed
Revoking corrupt and abusive cops’ peace officer certifications seems to be the gold standard for police accountability mechanisms nowadays. And by all accounts, the process, known as decertification, used by Washington’s Criminal Justice Training Commission, or CJTC, is one of the most effective at taking away offending officers’ badges and guns for good. But as I report in my NPR piece coming up on Weekend Edition, it still has plenty of problems.
Let’s talk about DECERTiFICATion
Across the nation, and in Washington in particular, both the number of officers faced with losing their license to enforce the law and the number actually being decertified are on the rise since the racial justice protests of 2020. Washington’s legislature passed stronger decertification policy and a ton of other reforms in 2021—many of which have been rolled back through law enforcement lobbying—in their first session since the killings of Manny Ellis and George Floyd.
Until earlier this year, the CJTC hadn’t ever decertified a Washington law enforcement officer⁰ over excessive force who didn’t first get fired, face criminal charges, or resign before they could be disciplined.
Enter longtime Cowlitz County jail Sgt. Tracy Bottemiller.
For most of his two-decade career as a jailer in southwest Washington, he wouldn’t have lost his law enforcement certification for using excessive force on a prisoner the way he did in 2022. He called up the jail director after it happened and said he’d gone "ballistic."
On a Zoom hearing last fall, Bottemiller tried to backtrack and say that by "ballistic,” he meant “precision.”
Before the 2021 reforms, only a felony conviction, dishonesty under oath or drugs could land an officer in hot water. If an officer was fired or resigned in lieu of discipline, the departments used an honor system, checking a “involved qualifying misconduct” box on a form mailed to the CJTC.
The old law also allowed only one PhD to weigh in on the disciplinary decision with several law enforcement officials. Instead, Bottemiller was questioned by a mother of six who now sits on the commission board about the moment the inmate, who was waiting to see a therapist and had one arm handcuffed to the wall, took a swing at Bottemiller and whiffed.
“And you were not in the boundaries of him being able to assault you until you escalated the situation, went towards him and then assaulted him?” asked CJTC Commissioner Trishandra Pickup for the disciplinary panel.
“I don't believe I escalated the situation. I believe I addressed the situation,” Bottemiller replied.
Surveillance video without sound shows the men trading blows, then Bottemiller pins the inmate against the wall and punches him in the face until he drops to his knees.
Earlier this year, the CJTC panel, which happened to be all women, voted unanimously to revoke Bottemiller’s license.
Path to reform
Pickup, the civilian CJTC commissioner who questioned the officer, was one of the people who pushed to make it possible. She got involved in advocacy after an officer shot and killed the father of her children, Stonechild Chiefstick, at a small-town Fourth of July show five years ago.
Pickup says that because of the way officers’ decisions affect the community, the public has a right to a say in setting standards.
“We are the ones that they are paid to serve and protect, so we should have a seat at the table,” Pickup told me in a phone call earlier this summer.
Pickup says the new decertification process aims to close a big gap in accountability for cases where prosecutors lack the evidence to prove an officer broke the law or when the misconduct doesn’t rise to the level of a crime. That’s why she and other families of people killed by police, known as the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability, or WCPA, campaigned for the reforms.
“Criminal offenses are just one type of misconduct,” Pickup said. “Lots of other misconduct is notable and can result in revocation.”
Several years before those reforms, the WCPA started out as a campaign to get rid of what used to be an all-but-impossible barrier to prosecuting police excessive force: proving an officer acted with malicious intent.
Since voters overwhelmingly struck down that protection for officers in 2018, two cases have gone to trial. Last month, a Washington jury for the first time found an officer, Jeff Nelson, guilty of murder for fatally shooting Jesse Sarey south of Seattle in 2019. And last December, three Tacoma police officers were acquitted of suffocating Manny Ellis after he said he couldn’t breathe in March 2020.
“Criminal misconduct is a high bar,” Pickup told me. “You know, as we have seen in the Tacoma case, as well as just prosecution being so rare.”
Some law enforcement perspective
Despite initial skepticism, many law enforcement leaders in Washington have come to support the process.
“I think it’s due process,” Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders told me in his office before a ride-along in June.3
Sanders was a deputy in his mid-20s when the decertification law passed in 2021. He ran for office the following year.
“There was a lot of hysteria in the law enforcement community about like, ‘Oh the state’s just gonna decertify you know every cop who posts a picture with Trump,’ ” Sanders said.
But Sanders says he’s seen the CJTC toss out “phony” complaints from civilians—including one against him. Records show it was after he was first elected, for sexist comments he allegedly made as a deputy. Investigators with the CJTC found the case had no merit.
He says most cases that go forward involve serious allegations, but not usually for excessive force. He’s questioned some decisions not to decertify officers for lying and potentially committing crimes, including deputies he’s disciplined at his department.
But earlier this year, Sanders briefly hired one of the former Tacoma police officers acquitted of killing Manny Ellis in March 2020, Christopher Burbank. Burbank quickly resigned after a public uproar.2
However, Sanders says he’s still confident the CJTC won’t decertify the ex-officer.4 The sheriff also says he hopes the process can quiet controversies over Ellis’ killing, and other deaths in custody.
“We need an endpoint where everyone can say, ‘You know what? I didn't like the outcome. But justice was served.’ ”
Sanders says the biggest problem he sees is the lack of resources at the CJTC. Some cases are taking years to resolve, and he’s worried for his understaffed department.
Inevitable hiccups
Due to its lack of funding and resources, the CJTC has a looming problem: a growing backlog of several hundred cases waiting for intake. The CJTC says it will request more money from the legislature next year. Meanwhile, some officers are waiting years for decisions.
For example, in an excessive force case I covered for The Spokesman-Review that happened in 2019, the officer was just decertified earlier this summer.1
Law enforcement leaders, policy experts and advocates agree wait times over a year hurt everyone involved. They also say more funding and resources are needed to evaluate if the process works.
“If we're not doing that, then at the end of the day all it is is a dog and pony show, OK,” Carlton Mayers, an attorney and police reform expert, told me on Zoom. “All we're doing is just propping things up to look to give off the image.”
Mayers has helped write decertification laws across the Midwest and says cases are rising around the country, not just in Washington. Part of the reason is more attention and education about local reforms.
Many states have added to the number of offenses for decertification. And some now allow for direct civilian complaints, like Washington does and Kansas has, since Lyndon B. Johnson was president. More states are posting the results publicly as well.
“I think all of that is in line with what the 2020 protests, what the demands were, which was not only accountability, but to also have more transparency,” Mayers told me.
More gaps to close
It’s unclear if a citizen complaint to a state commission has ever gotten an officer decertified outside of Washington and Kansas, which has been a criticism of the new law in Illinois⁵. Washington records show complaints leading to decertifications several times since 2021 where officers had avoided discipline. Kansas’ records only go back to the 2000s.
Rhode Island is the only state that hasn’t passed a law on decertification, while Hawaii has failed to implement a process to revoke police licenses since reform passed six years ago.
Mayers says he believes, unfortunately, that the idea will remain a part of the national conversation.
“There's going to be more incidents of officer-involved deaths and shootings,” Mayers said. ”And as those incidents continued to happen, you know, the calls and demands for police accountability will continue to be louder and louder and to be more and more.”
According to the data from the Washington Post and Mapping Police Violence, the number of fatal police shootings and deaths in custody overall has risen steadily each year since 2020.
The Weekly News Links
Send me links: jared@pnwjusticejournal.org.
Best reads
- Pt. 1: A Yaqui woman’s disappearance in Portland exposed flaws in MMIP investigations – Underscore Native News
- Pt. 2: Secrecy, data issues impede progress on missing and murdered Indigenous people – Underscore Native News
- Spokane's new police chief didn’t dream of being a cop, is a member of the Colville tribe and has never shot someone – The Spokesman-Review
- Portland’s new street racing law nabbed a busted Mustang – OregonLive
Policing
- During alleged shoplifting arrest, Beaverton police kill man they say fired first – OPB
- During burglary warrant arrest, Portland police shoot, injure man armed and in crisis. He’s got $80K already after claim officer put knee on neck in 2013 crisis – Portland police, OregonLive
- DNA genealogy leads to arrest 44 years after Kent Boeing instructor’s murder – Seattle Times
- Two Seattle officers hit during stolen vehicle recovery – SPD Blotter
- Spokane deputy recovering in hospital after severe stabbing – The Spokesman-Review
- Data: ‘John’ arrests don’t reduce street sex work, disproportionately men of color – PubliCola
Politicking
- Seattle Community Police Commission loses another director; SPD tries recruiting via podcast; MLK Labor condemns City Council efforts to punish sex workers, drug users – PubliCola
- Portland police lay out deflection process days before drugs are recriminalized – OPB
- Out-of-state law firms give big to an attorney general candidate in Oregon – Willamette Week
- As other cities pull the plug, Tacoma City Council member asks residents—with receipts— advocating against ShotSpotter, ‘Give it a chance?’ – Tacoma Weekly
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Lawyering
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- Federal lawsuit filed in death of man officers restrained face down under their knees, then left alone, at King County Jail – Seattle Times
- Catch up: Lawsuit dismissed over Seattle police fatally shooting man as he held his infant child while he fled DV arrest – Seattle Times
- ACLU sues Medford police for allegedly ‘spying’ on liberal groups they dislike – OPB
- Months after trial, Vancouver police again accused of gender discrimination – OPB
Incarcerating
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Health & Safety
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Data & Tech
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- Carjackings appear to be falling for the second straight year in 2024 – Jeffalytics
- Black, Native people face higher rates of charges in Washington courts – Washington State Standard
National Perspectives
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- What crime data says about the effects of Texas busing migrants – The Marshall Project
- Trump wants immunity for cops who serve him, retribution for those who don't – The Watch
- States to send troops to Texas’ southern border despite legal fight over enforcement – New York Times
- Would a group opposed to police blow the whistle on its founder? – NY Times
- Dashed hopes and big breaks: What it’s like to work on cold cases – NY Times
Just for Fun
This KUOW story on Washington’s attorney general candidates arguing in court over gun laws made me cringe.
The race for Kootenai County Sheriff is giving Joe Rogan.
Footnotes
0: I made an editing error on this superlative, which should have included the qualifier over excessive force in my email. Thank you to Kim Bliss from the CJTC decertification division for calling to correct me on her Saturday.
1: I honestly wasn’t sure Henderson would be decertified… or what Spokane Police Ombuds Bart Logue would be thinking after this doozy of a closing report.
The three-day certification hearing was like a full trial with the Attorney General’s Office representing the CJTC’s case against disgraced yet shameless former Spokane City Attorney Rocky Treppiedi. Treppiedi tampered with the federal grand jury investigation into police officer Karl Thompson for the beating death of Otto Zehm in 2006. He also lied to me repeatedly while reporting on Henderson’s case.
During Henderson’s decertification hearing, Treppiedi called up the Spokane County Sheriff’s detective who investigated Henderson for assault to spin a narrative that the famously conservative county prosecutor’s office was bent on crucifying Henderson. The only reason Henderson wasn’t charged was because the handcuffed guy he kicked in the nuts wasn’t up for a legal battle against the police department.
2: Manny Ellis’ younger sister, Monét Carter-Mixon, moved to Thurston County to escape harassment in the Tacoma area, where Ellis was beaten and suffocated by police. Monét RIPPED into Sanders at a town hall event. Here’s my recording with a transcript.
3: He’s only a few years older than me and we grew up in basically the same town, yet he’s the sheriff. It was very surreal driving all around places I hadn’t been in forever in the county in his special lawman Dodge Charger.
4: Reports are Burbank isn’t interested in being a cop now. Burbank’s former partner, Matthew Collins, lives in Oregon now. Back-up officer Timothy Rankine is apparently fighting to get hired and will probably file a lawsuit against the city of Tacoma, arguing city leaders got him blackballed. For the record, they’re also still under federal investigation.
5: CORRECTION: I made an error here initially when I reviewed Washington's database. Thank you again to Kim Bliss.
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