Seattle cop Cynthia Whitlatch has been on paid leave for nearly a year. She was taken off street duty after arresting a 69-year-old black man for using a golf club as a walking cane, and lying in her arrest report that he used the golf club as a weapon by swinging it at her. Her patrol car dashcam recording — which, ironically, she refers to numerous times during the encounter — proves otherwise. In addition, Whitlatch was caught making racist tweets in social media, raising questions about whether she accosted the man because of racial profiling. (Click here for story.)
Now, after a lengthy investigation, the Seattle police department’s Office of Professional Accountability has recommended that Whitlatch be fired — and Seattle’s worse-than-useless police union is already shedding a river of crocodile tears. “It appears to me that Officer Whitlatch has been run over with both axles of the political bus,” said Detective Ron Smith, president of the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild. According to Smith, the OPA’s findings don’t fit the facts, and he’s lost confidence in the OPA.
What Smith is upset about is that Seattle, under its new police chief, and in the changed political climate following a spate of highly-publicized police abuse cases across the country, may no longer willing to put up with bad cops no matter what they do. Smith seems to be living in some sort of bubble. Whitlatch certainly is; she was one of the 100 or so Seattle cops who sued to stop implementation of a revised use-of-force policy imposed on the Seattle PD after a federal investigation found systemic excessive force problems in Seattle’s policing.
The new chief, if she is to have any credibility, must follow OPA’s recommendation and fire Whitlatch. The county’s elected sheriff, John Urquhart, who rode into office on promises to clean up the sheriff’s department, has already fired several deputies for various kinds of misbehavior.
As for SPOG, they’re a union, and we expect unions to defend their members. They have a legal duty to do so, and that’s their role in the system. But Smith could have chosen more tempered language. He could have said something like, “As a union, our duty is to represent our members, and we will advocate for Officer Whitlatch in this process.” By adopting the role of an incendiary who feigns outrage against anyone who dares to criticize bad cops, by putting up a pretense that Whitlatch is a wronged angel, and by attempting to obstruct needed reforms, he is making himself part of the problem and is alienating the community that cops are hired to serve.
The problem in American policing is that bad cops have gotten away with too much, for too long, and this has fostered an anything-goes mentality. The task facing police reformers and the general public is reversing that trend and mentality, and the key reform is getting bad cops off police forces. Police unions have a legitimate role to play in this process. They perform an essential function by defending cops against false or exaggerated charges, contributing to fact finding, and preventing rushes to judgment. They can’t effectively perform these functions if they mindlessly obstruct warranted disciplinary actions and necessary reforms. That’s something police union leaders ought to think about.
https://youtu.be/dfOIFAEhcM0