Police Shooting Rates Across King County: Interview with Melissa Hellman, Seattle Times

Omari Salisbury  

 joined right now by Melissa Helman reporter with the Seattle Times covering South King County. How are you today?

Melissa Helman  

Doing well, how are you?

Omari Salisbury  

I'm good. So as usual, I was reading the times, which I do every day and I came across your article here. It says killings by Seattle Police grab attention but far more happen in South King County suburbs. Tell us about it.

Melissa Helman  

Sure. So in a nutshell, this is a story about police killings that are happening in South King County, mostly because there's so much attention that's on Seattle. And you quickly hear when there are police shootings, that happen in bigger cities, but oftentimes the suburbs, which is what I cover, South King County, they're often ignored. And so this article was an opportunity to shine a light on some of the people who were killed by police and also just taking a look at why it is that there's so much more attention on Seattle than there is in South King County. And what I found probably the most salient feature that we found from our several times’ analysis, which was looking at police killings from 2016 to 2020, is that there were 43 killings throughout the county, but over half of them, 24 of them were in South King County. So that's, that's 56% of it. And it's not that there is there are more people in South King County. And so because of that there are just more police killings there. There's actually only a third of the population in South King County. So it's really disproportionate rates of killings are happening in these areas.

Omari Salisbury  

Right. And what are one of the things I noticed in the articles you talked about how the Seattle Police Department, although it gets more attention, it's under the consent decree, There's a lot of eyes on it and everything else, What kind of oversight are you finding out there in these police departments in the suburb? And how does that play into maybe the culture of policing and the different agencies?

Melissa Helman  

Unfortunately, there are not nearly as many oversight mechanisms in King County as there is in Seattle because Seattle has been under a federal consent decree since 2012.  so we found that in a lot of the smaller cities that police camera isn't required for the police officers. And we also found that the largest oversight really is police investigating each other. And so the valley investigative team is one of the biggest groups that is looking at these police killings. So since it was started, a few years ago, they've been looked into 50 killings throughout South King County. And the people who are involved in this are all different police departments. And they basically created this group to create some structure and some protocol because outside police organizations were already investigating each other and they wanted to have, they wanted to have some more structure for this. So the valley investigative team is one oversight that they have down there. And then they also have the inquest process. But unfortunately, the inquest process is currently been stalled because of lawsuits against it. So currently, there's  not as much oversight for places as a lot of the impacted families would like,

Omari Salisbury  

right now, South King County is basically where the biggest poor people below the poverty line and I would say marginalized communities are, it's also home to a shifting demographic of people that have been moved out of Seattle displace from the city limits out to South King County. Do you see Have you heard of police departments doing anything as far in regards to training and in becoming familiar with the shifting demographic that's in these cities, you know, when I was in high school, it was like, I didn't know anybody who lived in Auburn or Puyallup that looked like me. And now there are so many black people in places like Auburn, Puyallup, Kent, and Federal Way. Where does like one police training and even interaction between police departments and community come into play?

Melissa Helman  

This was a concern that as we activists impacted family that I spoke with, talked about, they said that there's been a lot of displacement from Seattle, and a lot of marginalized people are moving to the south. But there's, the police are just not trained to properly to be able to meet and properly police over marginalized communities and sometimes using the use of force a little bit sooner than they should, or using more extreme use of force than maybe they should for vulnerable communities.

One person I spoke with Rosee Davis, who is the sister of Renee Davis, who was killed by the Auburn police on the Muckleshoot reservation back in, I believe it was 2016. So she told me that one of her concerns that she has is those police officers who are policing over the Muckleshoot tribe, don't have an understanding of the trauma that indigenous people experience. And if they did have more of an understanding of intergenerational trauma that maybe they would police differently than they do. If they recognized the people who they're policing over and tried to become more of a community then they would maybe think twice before reaching for their gun. And so there is some efforts recently to try to get more training and cultural sensitivity training, in particular for the South King County police departments. So representative Tina Orwell is currently she started a couple of workgroups that are trying to bring some training for mental health for police officers in the south and then also to create, like a mentorship and internship program for people who are training to be police officers, so that they would have a community leader who they're in touch with as they're going through their training so that they would be really involved in the community and understand it before they go out there and police.

Omari Salisbury  

Right. I know that the actual culture of policing is something that people have been looking at as of late to talk about the Auburn police department, for example, an officer Nelson there who's actually facing charges now for the murder of Jesse's Sarey. That's the third person that officer Nelson had killed. But years ago, there was a federal public defender that submitted a report talking about officer Nelson, like there was like flags that have gone into the offer Auburn police department, but they're saying that the culture they're in in the police department was such that either these flags were, you know, ignored or not seen. How much do you think that the actual culture inside of the police department? So there's the culture of interacting with the people and trying to know that the people they police better, But do you think that there needs to be a change in culture internally in some of these police departments?

Melissa Helman  

I just wanted to look at my article really quickly because I wanted to reference a group name I can't remember. Okay. And yeah, I definitely agree. And that's what I found in my reporting is that the policies that these police departments have is oftentimes what ends up exacerbating this excessive use of force. And so I spoke with New York-based nonprofit law enforcement strategy for the center for policing equity. And so when I spoke with them, they talked about how there's not as much oversight in suburban cities. And oftentimes, the greatest oversight that you do see in policing, is police policing each other, which is they don't believe that it's the most effective way of really holding police accountable. Also, it seems like what is more important than anything else than oversight mechanisms is having civilians being able to watch them and someone who's completely outside of law enforcement and also having policies and a culture that does not allow for this unacceptable behavior from the police.

Omari Salisbury  

Right. And last question for you, you're a member of the media, I'm a member of the media. You know, this is a valid concern that your article covers that these things are happening there in South King County, but they're not really getting a lot of attention. Why do you think that is so?

Melissa Helman  

So, unfortunately, I think that South King County has been ignored for a long time. And part of the reason why my position was created was so that we could shine a light on the lack of coverage or shine a light on issues that haven't received a lot of coverage. I think also because there are so many people who are moving there who have been displaced, maybe the media hasn't caught up on it yet,  but it does seem like media isn't as focused on South King County as maybe it could or should be. When I spoke with some activists, they talked about how there was no media at a couple of protests that had happened over the summer in Auburn and Kent. So it definitely seems like it has been ignored.

Omari Salisbury  

All right, Melissa Helman reporter from the Seattle Times. Thank you for your time.

Melissa Helman  

Thanks for having me.