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- Hello and welcome to the Crosscut Festival.

I'm David Kroman, news and politics reporter for Crosscut.

I'm excited to have a conversation today with former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, who in 2018 became the first black woman to lead the Seattle Police Department.

In 2020, she retired from the department, citing her opposition to budget cuts proposed by the Seattle City Council.

Chief Best, thank you for being here.

- Well, good morning David and I'm so glad to be here.

Thank you for having me.

It's very exciting.

- Thanks for coming on, we appreciate it.

I wanna start today with the role of police in society today.

And I'm gonna read you a quote of yours actually.

In 2019, you told a group of homeless service providers, "I feel like we're working with a lot of systems that really haven't reached their full potential.

So that officers end up on the front lines of all of this stuff that we don't need to be on the front lines of though.

A lot of times we have to be mental health providers or work on drug addiction issues, but that is the state of the city."

I just, to start, I'm curious, can you just elaborate on that and what you meant by that?

- Yeah, sure.

I don't think it's any secret that opposition is a lot of discussion around about officers responding to a lot of calls for service that might not be well within what we would expect from policing.

But often in my view is because we have other, I'm just gonna call it failed systems or inadequately supported systems might be a better way to put it.

And what officers are often responding to people in crisis, people with homeless and housing issues, people with addiction issues, can often be at the crux of what we're responding to.

And if those other systems that were more appropriately capable of dealing with those issues were actually engaged and involved and supported fully.

We're working in tandem.

I think we have a lot better responses.

So that's really what I'm looking at.

Other systems that aren't necessarily fully funded or capable or staffed to deal with some of these issues that come up routinely and officers end up addressing.

- How much of officer's sort of daily work would you say is now responding to those sorts of incidents?

- It is hard for me to quantify that I will say this because it depends on where you work, what time of day, what shift.

There are certain areas where, for example, there's a supportive housing for people with a mental crisis.

So a lot of that officer's time is spent responding to and from that area, whereas in other areas, maybe not so much, but I can say generally speaking, at least when I was in Seattle, the latest figures that I know was about 18,000 calls for service for people in crisis.

So that was over about 18-month period.

So that's a lot of calls for service, for just the crisis calls.

Let alone the other types of calls that you respond to, where the crux of the issue, I, myself as responding to domestic violence.

When in fact, you know the person may have committed domestic violence, but also have a substance abuse problem or some other issue going on.

So there's a lot of intersectionality there.

So I would say a great deal of time is spent with those types of issues.

- And I bring this subject up because as you know, you're aware a lot of the protests of last summer were around police's role in society.

And some people calling for police to take less of a role in sort of day-to-day responses, you know, responding to societal's broader problems like that.

And so I guess I hear some overlap in what you were saying now about failed systems and what some of the protesters were saying.

And I guess I'm wondering, do you see it that way?

Do you see overlap in some of the demands from last summer and what you're saying now?

- I absolutely do.

I mean, we're actually saying the same things in a lot of ways, but coming from it, maybe from a different solution standpoint, but can clearly recognize when there's an argument for having other service providers pick up in certain areas and they may be more appropriate in many cases to do that.

So I think it's important that we continue to have that discussion and actually move forward on implementing some of those things.

But I also wanted to make sure that we were doing it in a way that, you know, we had all the stakeholders at the table and we piloted something because it's not necessarily a new idea, but in order to make it really work, we wanna maybe start with a smaller area, figure out where the gaps are, gaps in services or what other things that we can do before we implemented something on a broader perspective.

But clearly there's an opportunity, there to collaborate.

And I think some of the talk around this was, defunding and divesting in police departments.

Well, I understood where that came from.

I personally believe that we should bolster the systems that are there and see how that works collaboratively and then scale back the funding.

So that is done in a way that we should, we don't, inadvertently or unexpectedly have a negative impact.

So I'm all for it though, because I do understand that everything evolves.

Situations evolve and we do look at how we can better provide service to the community.

And I think there's a way to do that and to enhance it, but it really needs to be thoughtful and thought out and modulating and not just go in without some thoughtful strategies.

- Yeah, I was gonna talk about the funding mechanisms.

And as you alluded to a lot of the demands were about taking money from police in order to build out those systems that you said were failures and, or not failing necessarily, but not well supported.

- Right.

- And you know, the argument was that through decades and through several recessions police department budgets have continued to go up while those other departments maybe haven't seen the same sorts of budget increases.

And I'm curious to hear more about how the funding for police should be viewed in the context of funding for those other systems.

- Well, I think that they should look at everything at how, what we're expecting people to do and how we're expecting to, respond to calls for service.

I will say these police budgets have gone up when I talked on my own perspective and a lot of those unfunded mandates for things that obviously needed, they want officers to do extra training and extra equipment, whether that is body-worn cameras or in-car videos, or some other additional equipment that officers can use to make themselves or the public safer.

All those things cost money.

I mean, that's, at the end of the day, it cost to add these things onto an organization.

And so I don't believe that under any circumstances, at least I can speak from my own experiences, anybody being frivolous with the funding or with the money.

There was just a lot of work to be done.

And in some cases they point to the overtime.

The overtime is often an effect of not having the staffing numbers to do the work that's being asked to do.

So now we have to put some money on overtime to come back or has money back, fill a position.

So those things were occurring as well.

So if we had the appropriate level of staffing, if we were looking at the types of calls for service, we were collaborating with other organizations.

I think that there's an opportunity there to not share the wealth, so to "speak" and figure out how we might move things around and be more efficient.

- And it sounded like you alluded to before though, that you could see a scenario in which those other systems have been built out enough that it might be appropriate to move some money away from the police department.

Did I hear you correctly when you said that?

- You, yeah, I was saying, yeah, well, we're saying the same thing.

But we're frame framing a little differently.

Instead of moving money away from them.

Do you think, here's the pool that we have and here's the need and who can do what and how do we fund it, right?

And so that would be the most logical way to move forward if you ask me.

And that may mean at the end of the day, that there's less funding going directly to the police budgets and more going into other areas, but that needs to be a collaborative discussion about how that works and what that looks like, I can say.

- Moving on slightly, we know that the summer's protests were spurred on by George Floyd's murder, but obviously there was a lot more pent up there.

What do you think led to that moment being as big as it was?

- Well, there're so many things to unpack with the murder of George Floyd.

Look, there's nobody I can think of, that wasn't affected by seeing a grown man, murdered in front of our very eyes.

We all saw it, we all were affected by it and it was tragic.

And so I think that just seeing that, like, that's built so many horrible things that we've seen, somehow watching this prolonged event was just, was more decline, you know, and then you couple that with the fact that we we're all going through this pandemic, people are now at home, we can't really get out and do other things.

I think all of that combined together really gave the impetus for, you know, it was, there was going to be protests no matter what, and rightfully so.

But I think it gave even more energy behind the ability to really make voices heard, doing the protest for the murder of George Floyd and the lack of humanity, you know, Derek Chauvin.

Of course now we moved, you know, it's been almost a year since, you know, over the years since this occurred.

And certainly we have been able to look at all of the evidence and look at the way that former officer behaved.

And it's very clear now that he's been convicted, you know, what happened there.

So it was it sort of validated everybody's, horror at what they were seeing and why they were protesting.

- And I wonder if leading up to that moment, do you, were police departments doing enough in the past to listen to community's concerns?

- Now that's a pretty heavy question and here is why.

Because there's 18,000 police agencies.

And so the, where the, where it gets difficult is that, some agencies probably yes, and some agencies probably no.

Right?

You know, so you have so much divergent ideas about training and how community action is and community engagement that you're never gonna get just the same thing every single place you go.

There was a shooting where a male was shot in the back.

I think it was, I can't think of his first name.

I know Blake and, you know, he was going around the car and the officer shot him in the back.

And I was like, where's the body-worn video?

But they don't have body-worn video.

So that lack of continuity and consistency, nationally from agency to agency always creates a challenge for, you know, where some agencies are more progressive and others aren't, some agencies are doing more chaining and others aren't, some agencies do some sort of technical procedures and handle evidence in a certain way and others don't.

So I'm a big believer that we should be more consistent across the board, have some baseline our responsibilities so that we can have those discussions, from at least the same basis of operation.

So when you ask a question about whether they're working well and whether they're communicating well with communities, you know, I'm gonna say, that's going to be nuanced depending upon where you were and the country and what agency, and the level of engagement of people around that, the demographics of the neighborhood and all those things contribute to the ability to have those types of discussions.

- Yeah, in Seattle, we've been talking about reform for a long time recently in the last decade, in the context of the consent decree.

But I think the last summer showed us that there's really a portion of the city that doesn't feel like those reforms have stuck or they haven't done enough.

So how does a police department make changes in a way that feels real on the ground, that people actually feel in their day-to-day lives.

- Alright.

Yeah, so two, there're two things here.

One is, I also really believe in the reform, the reform effort, changing policies, procedures, and accountability now in Seattle, in particular having an officer of inspector general and officer of police accountability and ombudsman and, you know, all of those things and a community police commission as well.

All of those things come together to give more accountability, to build reforms, to help change systems.

And I think that is incredibly important.

So that's one piece.

But on the same tag, and at the same hand, you know, there needs to be that level of connection to the community stakeholders and building those relationships that actually make change happen.

I think in some ways that should be the role of the community police commission.

That is my own view.

Representing community and community issues, but also departments should be going out reaching out directly because even though all of these things had been in place in Seattle for over a decade now, we've been doing, working on before it's, you know, so I, I would actually say some of the requirements probably antiquated at this point, 'cause it was all over a decade ago.

But in the meantime, we have people who are day-to-day seeing whether it's here or elsewhere, you know, black people, black and brown people dying at the hands of police, you know, a higher scale of numbers.

And these are really tragic situations and they hit home, right.

They, and so people can't really feel like we're progressing when they turn on their TV every week and they see another incident.

So this the dialogue and the discussion needs to work well, focus on those national incidents, also need to bring it home to where we all live and work and are engaging on a daily basis because that's what's gonna affect you personally.

I mean, all of it affects us, but you know, what's gonna affect what happens right here is the relationships that you're building right here.

And so I see that as a part of a dichotomy about reforming things.

Look, I walked in a couple of marches myself, listened, I'm not, you know, no police gear, just sort of walking along as any community member would and listening.

And it was very clear that the emotion and the concern, they weren't, you know, they were real that's what I was trying to say.

It wasn't just somebody, just the people were really feeling that level of hurt and pain.

So as much as we had made some progress on the accountability scale, we still need to deal with some of these other pervasive issues and underlying issues.

And a lot of it is based on race and racism.

And people are trying to fix that often, you know, working through the police departments 'cause they're very visible, but you know, I always go back to, we need to fix that on a whole lot of other levels as well.

Do you think you can make a police department that just doesn't have those issues while the rest of your society does, it's almost impossible to make happen.

You have to address the issues and the police.

But at the same time, I would say simultaneously, be working on those other systems; education and healthcare and everything else where we see the detrimental effects of a racial divide in this country.

- And as long as we were talking about George Floyd and Derek Chauvin, you know, one of the things that people pointed into that secured the guilty verdict for Derek Chauvin was his own chief testifying against him.

If you were in that situation, would you have testified against George Floyd if you were his chief?

Excuse me.

- Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, definitely.

I definitely, I think I would.

I think most chiefs were.

A lot of chiefs will because a lot of progressive agencies, chief Medeira Arradondo as a, you know, a good guy.

I know him personally.

He's also sued his agency at one time before he was chief for racial disparity.

So I think that he definitely was gonna air on doing what's right.

I think I would have too.

I can't imagine being okay with what happened outside of policy, you know, it wasn't even a policy issue.

This was a crime.

People keep talking about policies as if, you know, how valuable are the policy, which he did and which was a good element, but he was convicted of a crime, a criminal act.

And we want to keep that in mind.

So you know, what she isn't going to, or even person who wears a badge or is committed, isn't going to testify in a criminal case against a criminal.

- Yeah.

On the protests, going forward, you know, there's been a lot of reflection about response to the protests last summer.

Going forward, should police departments be allowed to use tear gas at protest?

- I would say there maybe a circumstance where it could be allowed, but generally speaking, no.

Generally speaking, we shouldn't be.

And also, I would say this, if the community doesn't want it or can't, just says no to it, then you're gonna have to operate within that.

That said, and the desi will be some sort of, let's say the opportunity to disperse large crowds or to defend, when they're composing, opposing not composing, opposing groups.

So to be able to clear areas.

And whereby to glass, to gas clearly is, enough starter for certain areas until in Seattle, it clearly caused me personally, a lot of stress about how we're gonna move forward with that.

And you have to recognize times change, you know, what was acceptable in 1977 may not be acceptable in 87 may not be acceptable in 97 and certainly in 2020.

It wasn't, right?

And so self-reflection, there is warranted, and you know, I never walked forward and said that we did everything perfectly when we didn't, because we didn't.

But I do think that under the circumstances, we were trying to make the best decisions in the best interest of everybody involved.

And so to get that, that discussion continues.

I think I just read today where it's been banned in another jurisdiction.

So I think we're moving into a different era when we don't have to use, it if we use it.

- Right.

And you alluded to some self-reflection.

Can you say more about that?

Was the Seattle Police Department's use of tear gas proper, last year?

- Well, it was proper in my view and that we tried to follow the regulations that would presented to us.

But, you know, I also recognized if that we have to adhere to the norms of society and to what they want now in the past, you know, we'd use to gas, we'd used to gas before and people weren't thrilled about it, but it was still permissible to use as a crowd dispersal irritant.

And so it wasn't banned at the time.

It wasn't illegal to use.

It was definitely one of our options that we could utilize to disperse large crowds.

And we were dealing with some pretty unique circumstances there, again, not as a defense of which just saying what was before us, you know, these super large groups, most people gathered just to express their complete, consternation of, for lack of a better word, of what happened to George Floyd.

But there were pockets of groups of people there that were also engaged in really destructive behavior as well.

So we needed to figure out, you know, now being reflective, how can we figure out ways of addressing that portion without overly or unduly effecting the rest of the people who gathered in simple.

And that question, I think the agencies are still working through it, you know, right after, we had dealt with the bulk.

The protest continued for months and months and months with a really big ones.

We convened through the International Association of Chiefs of Police, multiple cities from around the world to talk about, how to address these really large events and protests.

We you have elements that are being structured.

What do you do and how do you do that safely and not get yourself or your organization in hot water so to speak, I'm trying to follow traditional mechanisms, which are no longer accepted.

And it was an interesting conversation.

I think a lot of cities, we talked to people from Paris, from Copenhagen, from Toronto, London, other major cities, all cities across the world, still struggling with how best to do these things and how best to address it in a way that still provided for the public safety, didn't unduly put anybody at risk.

I think that we're still figuring out the best way to do that.

And I do think we'll have some compromises and some concessions that we made on behalf of the public to make sure that we don't have the level of eds that we had coming out of the George Floyd protest.

- Yeah, I was gonna ask, I mean, it seems like we have this cycle of protest and some clashes, and then there's some finger pointing in both directions.

How do you disrupt that cycle?

How do you create an environment in which people are confident that they can go out and express their first amendment rights and not, come away feeling like it was it devolved into chaos.

- Yeah, well, you know, I think that there's a lot of folks in Seattle that are working on that now, and really across the country, working on those very issues about how do we make sure that people are feel safe, protesting, but how we also make sure that these things will evolve into, you know, into these really horrible situations where everybody's pitted against everyone else.

I often said I would go to a meeting after one of these situations and nobody was happy, right?

The business owners didn't like being alluded the people that were living in and around the precinct, they may have gotten some pepper spray or tear gas in their home are certainly angry about that.

Now there are protesters who they're peaceful, who also got the residual effects of that so bad, there were others there who were being disruptive, who, you know, also have concerns about, what was happening.

So there was a lot of those comps too, right.

They're also there.

And so just trying to make sure that, we keep kept an environment that was relatively as safe as possible for all those officers responding as well.

One of the things that people don't often know to consider is the fact that as a police chief, you have to make sure, I mean, the police department and fire department are two areas that can be sued.

The employer can be sued for not adequately equipping their personnel.

So if we have a night where there's some bottles being thrown, I certainly can't send people out there without helmets on their head, right?

There's other things to consider in a way as well.

So I see a way forward, but you know, there's a lot of complexity around these issues.

- Moving on to the question of discipline and police unions, you know, you came up through Seattle Police Department, you were a SPOG member, Police Officers Guild member, of course, then you transitioned into management.

I guess I'm curious.

Can you talk to them about the role of that arbitration police in police discipline?

Does, do you think that police unions and locally SPOG, the Seattle Police Officers Guild have too much power?

- Yeah, that's a such, you're asking all these very loaded questions, like you're a trained journalist.

(laughing) Yeah, because, you know, I absolutely, there's always going to be some healthy, healthy tension between management and SPOG It's just the way it works.

And that will be in some ways, you know, we have, we all are interested in making sure that we have a good work environment for the officers that's safe and clear SPOG's well, supposed to be benefits, working conditions and then pay, right, for officers.

So, and we want them to remain in that role, but not dictate the values and the accountability for the whole organization.

So there's always a healthy tension when there's some crossover with SPOG but I believe in unions and that unions should be there to protect workers' rights, you know?

So I don't wanna ever go against that piece of it, but certainly we also need to be having clear guidelines about responsibility and who's in charge of what, and as a police chief, you know, when you administer discipline, you know, part of that process and going to arbitration, why people to have the appeal process in due process, but it seems like the arbitration piece has been, contentious in many ways and could use some reevaluation.

I mean, we, the Seattle Police Department, when I say we, the Seattle Police Department, I'm telling you the employment of a person who was accused of excessive force and the appeals, it could still be appealed even today.

And we're in 2021 now.

And I believe when his employment was terminated with Kathleen, it was like 2014 or 2015, I can't remember the exact year, but it's been a long process.

And does that make sense for something like that to drag out to that level?

And I will say the arbitrator stated, and of course, I'm on the record, but the average arbitrator did state that it was excessive force and that was a policy violation.

So you agree with it, but you somehow disagree with the discipline that was administered and it drag on for a long time.

And I would say in this particular case, that was not the right decision, right?

And I think that it's worth looking at the system in place, how arbitrators are chosen.

Do they have a history and experience of dealing with law enforcement and policing?

There are several recommendations around that.

And I think that came from CPC and others about arbitration selection and I think it's worth looking at.

- Did you ever, win deciding on discipline for an officer, did you ever change or adjust the kind of discipline you thought was appropriate in order to pass down something that you thought had a better chance of making it through arbitration?

- No, really I didn't.

I can let arbitration be the guild factor in making those decisions, and those decisions are pretty, they can be pretty complex and they look at the history of the officer, what they've done before, what they haven't done, do they, have they been in trouble on other occasions, are they a new officer who may have made a mistake or are so they'd be seasoned and well-versed enough to know better?

I mean, all those things come into play.

How egregious was it?

Does this, did the action undermine public trust to the point that we really can't have this person back and employ?

All those things come into effect when you're trying to make sure that you do make the decision on a case.

And sometimes, people will want the prison to be terminated, but that's not really the most viable action.

Sometimes they don't, you know, I've had disagreements with even the LPA where they didn't want to terminate.

And we did terminate because, you know, ultimately my value was, look, I gotta wear this uniform just like everybody else does.

And so I don't want this person walking around, having done some of these acts representing, our professional line of work.

So it was much more important to me to make sure that they weren't there to continue.

- And we're gonna get to some audience questions here in a few minutes, but well, got a few more of my own.

When you, so when you took the job, when you were selected as a police chief, - Finally.

(laughing) - Right.

Which was a famously sort of chaotic selection process, when you did get that job, how long did you think you would keep it?

- You know, I thought, you know, you never know, right.

But I kind of thought around the five yearS mark, you know, I thought, probably five years is good, but rotating out of any position and getting fresh eyes on it.

So that was in my sort of my minds.

You never know, some people stay longer.

I think chief Kerlikowske was for nine years.

The people were less, but, you know, that was kind of the barometer.

I would've thought, you know, not five years.

- And can you just talk about what changed that plan a little bit?

- Yeah, well, as you know, cause you were there, I mean, it was all of the, you know, it was coming out of all the George Floyd protests and then the defined issues.

You know, they were really challenging People tell me, and I absolutely agree.

I look younger now than I did a year ago because it was so stressful being involved and with all of that, and I was up late at night and I was always trying to do what's right.

What's best for the organization.

But ultimately look, the budget cuts, the defunding that discussion, and then really the lack of respect that city council paid me.

It was all that combination of all those things.

It was time to go.

Look, I was barely, you know, could barely communicate with council.

A lot of the communication was done in writing simply because I really wanted to get things on the record and didn't have the level of engagement that, that I'd seen many other chiefs have to be honest with you.

Look, I had worked in the chief's office as the first, the deputy chief with Kathleen O'Toole.

I was a public information officer and the chief stamper and then Chief Kerlikowske.

So I worked on that tough floor around the brass a lot, in between different stints in the department.

And it really was so contentious.

I never seen a period of time where the council would make decisions about what's happening with policing and not even consult the police department on it.

So it was really trying in that regard, all of the talk about defunding people, the 50%, I was on the record, it was down the record it was back to back was too drastic, too soon without having, really good planning and what's gonna be the process, who's gonna answer the calls.

I felt like it was really a way of, in some ways it's setting, you know, the chief of whatever that was me at the time, for failure, because, you know, it's a probable outcome that if you reduced the force by 50% without viable options for handling calls for service, for dealing with shootings, robberies, assaults, and those types of issues, that crime was going to go up and, you know, and then people will turn the chief and say, chief, what are you gonna do about that the crime?

It's like, well, crime has happened, we have less resources than we had before to really address the problem.

And so I didn't wanna have that laid at my feet.

And then the other thing was the whole issue of all the work we had done to bring additional diversity to the organization, you're hiring more officers of color, hiring more women.

And so those would be the first people, as I mentioned before to, to get laid off if we were to delete from the department by 50%.

And so I, look I'm the very first African-American woman chief in Seattle, and my legacy could not, it would not be that we let go of the most, of all of our diversity under this defund movement.

We ended up being less diverse under my time than more diverse, you know, and I just, that was something I can not personally invest in.

It was incredibly important to me that we maintain the diversity that we kept on that track.

And even if it ended up that we would want to shift, shift funding and resources to do it thoughtfully without laying off, some of our most diverse opposites and really good people, I was leading these folks as we bring them in.

I was saying the last group I talked to 11 of the 12, had, you know, degrees.

Something that probably didn't happen when I came on.

And three or four of them had advanced degrees and, you know, it could be doing a lot of different other things working for four to 500 companies, but decided to come out in police department in a public service capacity.

Sending them away just felt very duplicitous and disingenuous to why we had recruited them and brought them on.

- Do you think that was, the decision was a little premature in retrospect now because you know, there weren't, we haven't seen any layoffs that there exits.

We have seen officers leaving of their own accord.

Do you think maybe your exit, sort of gave the idea that they could leave and maybe if you'd stuck around, you could have helped people stick around.

- You know, listen, I wanted to stick around, but as you know, the conversation was never that they weren't going to do this.

So I fully expected based on, you know, that no, the council didn't follow through to their word on that, but I did expect them to, and to actually lay people off, they were telling me at that time that you could even lay people off out of order.

And so, you know, I think the handwriting was on the wall, but it was going to be a contentious situation from here on out.

And, you know, nobody gains from that.

The city doesn't get better protection, I'm not able to do my job as effective as I thought I would be able to do it, you know?

And so I really felt like it wasn't the best interest of everybody involved to move on.

And I really didn't want my legacy to be, this whole thing.

And you were there, you know, read the papers.

I mean, it was very clear, the comments coming out of council about defunding and about taking money away and about laying people off out of order and all these different things that were really, I think, going to have a detrimental effect on the public and certainly on the ability to move forward.

And I just didn't want to be an enabler of that from my perspective.

And you're right, as it turns out, it hasn't been quite as bad as they were pontificating about earlier.

Like there's no way you to be clairvoyant enough to know what the future held and what was gonna happen.

And several officers left on their own, many because, they were under the impression that they were gonna lose their jobs.

They started applying for jobs back in July and August when I was leaving, because, you know, they're people like everybody else.

They have mortgages and school and all those other things.

And if you're gonna be laid off, you had to prepare, you know, prepare to go elsewhere.

Maybe where you'd be more appreciated, maybe where your services were more wanted.

So I think that was definitely a factor in people's exodus.

- And so I wanna get to a couple audience questions here, as best as we can.

We're running a little short on time, but from Amanda Richer here, she asks, what are some of the actions that the policing institutions can take to ensure positive interactions with vulnerable population, such as the unhoused?

- Yeah, that's always, you know, tough because officers are often intersecting with, people who are unhoused.

But, there's an unhoused is so broad, right?

Unhoused and addicted, unhoused and mentally ill, unhoused and down.

So there's different ways that you're gonna interact with people who aren't living in shelters or in a sheltered way.

I think that working with the organizations best suited for that.

Working with a social workers and a social service providers really will give us better opportunity.

I think that the department was responding much better to that than they do when I came on, you know, I'm retired now, but I came out 30 years ago.

It was a completely different response than what we're seeing now, or there people were asking for services and looking for diversion and looking for other ways to help service folks.

So, and now I think they've taken that out of the hands of the navigation team and put it into another arena, which is fine.

But I think that working together, collaborating, having resources that can come in and help people is really the best thing to do.

- Moving on Mary Grosvenor, sorry for mispronunciations, asks, what do you think about the impact of police with military backgrounds?

Is it helpful or does it exacerbate/reinforce too much force or escalation?

- Yeah, well, I'm gonna say I come from, I have a little bias because I had a military background, so, you know, so I wanna make sure that that's, but I think that there's, there are things that, I don't think that having military backgrounds should not make it, you know, where you can't be a police officer, because everything is so individual about how people's perspective is and what they did and what their role was.

I think the one thing that did hang on a little bit was sort of that chain of command issue and adhering to it.

And I think that we should flatten things more, those discussions with community members should be with every echelon of the organization and not just the higher ranking ones.

So there is some of that that can be helpful, but, I don't think it should be an all out disqualifier if you have a military experience.

'Cause you know, there's probably a lot of very good people who have served in the military and aren't, aren't happy or are out there trying to hurt people.

So you really want to make sure that you have the processes and the backgrounding and all that in place so that you can ensure that you're not getting people who have a propensity toward any negative actions.

- And moving along here, this is a sort of general question about the pay for officers.

Let's see, disregarding overtime, this question that asks, has any compensation, pay in benefits for individual officers risen much more faster than inflation over the last decade or so.

So I guess the question is the pace of raises for officers.

If that's appropriate.

- Yeah, how can I answer, okay.

I just don't know the answer to that, to be honest.

I can say that, you know, there have been pay raises and I think, you know, recently saw that, all that's done through negotiation with the city between the city and the unions and administering police chief.

So yeah, they definitely have been pay raises whether they are commensurate with the other economic factors, they should be.

I think those, that's why they have these discussions, well with the city about where they can raise and where they can't raise, what they can or cannot do.

But those are really handled that.

- I'll follow up on that one.

There was some reporting out of, 10 officers, some number of officers who were earning well in the six figures overtime, $400,000 in some case, a year off of overtime.

What's going on there is that, how problematic do you view that and how do you avoid that kind of- - Yeah, I thought it was a real problem if you wanted the truth about it.

And I think that the systems all need to be talking to each other and align former council member, Tim Burgess really was trying to take up how we deal with off duty work and that, you know, and the requirements and the tracking, and these, the needs to be a technological answer to that.

Because even I know that at times, a person works a regular shift and they may go work.

We have rules about how much, you know, after the, you can work on department time, but there's other off duty work that's out there.

That's not regulated or tracked by the department.

So I think that all of that needs to come into alignment so that, you know, all the systems know was happening before somebody files a tax return.

We have this exorbitant amount.

And if the person actually worked the time and was paid their proper pay at the time, then he knows, how to dispute, you know, they're getting their appropriate pay.

But so there's a number of hours that person becomes, their wellness and their ability to do their job well become effected and we wanna make sure that we don't go outside of that.

- Marianne North asks, do you believe the stress of policing contributes to police misbehavior?

If so, how can police departments help police officers deal with the stress before it turns into dangerous behavior?

- Sure, there's a number of answers to that, but, you know, wellness is, it's now one of the critical topics in policing about how to keep officers mentally, physically well.

If officer responds to a particularly traumatic call for service, you know, is there an opportunity to either take them offline or to not have them go to back-to-back calls of that nature, to make sure that we have in place as a profession, the appropriate opportunities to have, to go see psychologist, to go talk to somebody to work through it where it's not tracked by the department, but we just want to make sure that people have, appropriate outlet.

Additionally, they have, they've added even a system on the phone where people can just log it on the phone and do, and maybe just talk things through.

Now constantly being under pressure is detrimental to anybody in any profession.

So certainly you put a badge, a gun, a taser, and pepper spray on somebody.

You want to make sure that they are in the right mental state to do their work.

And so it's incredibly important.

Many agencies, including Seattle, are looking at opportunities to make sure that they're able to check and keep officers, you know, their wellness at the forefront, particularly after they had a serious number of, a high number of increases in officer's suicides as well.

So all of that are indicators that we need to do more on the wellness front.

- Moving on, how would you counsel women, especially women of color who might be considering moving up the ranks in SPD on the audience questions.

- Yeah, I was off to pushing for that because it's incredibly important that the department reflects the community.

And I can tell you, I can't even tell you actually, the number of young girls and mothers and actually young boys too, that, you know were, were surprised and proud of the fact that there was African-American woman chief at the time.

So I think that that level of representation makes a difference and both the perception of the organization, that certainly in the perception of people who want to come into the organization at some point, or have a role there.

I would encourage people to stay the course, be resilient, there'll be challenges.

I definitely had my supporters and who I am indebted to and grateful for.

And I have my detractors as well.

So you gotta develop some thick skin here, but stay focused on the overarching outcome.

It would be unrealistic to say there won't be challenges.

There will be challenges within the organization or outside of the organization, but it's incredibly important that the organization reflect the community and that people know that there are people within this organization willing to move up and take on these positions.

'Cause how can you really trust if you only see, a monolithic group of folks in charge?

How can you trust that there's really fairness and equity within the organization?

- Well, we are unfortunately out of time.

- That was fast.

- Yeah, It always does.

Chief Best I wanna say thank you for a great conversation and we really appreciate you, having you on.

- Great, thank you David.

I appreciate being here.

I thank all people at Crosscut for putting us on.

It's a great event.

- Okay, thanks so much.

And thank all of you for helping us kick off the Crosscut Festival.

Our next session is this afternoon at 3:00 PM, with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and have a good afternoon everyone.

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