Pubdate: Wed, 06 Aug 2014
Source: Stranger, The (Seattle, WA)
Copyright: 2014 The Stranger
Contact:  http://www.thestranger.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2241
Author: Dominic Holden

SEATTLE'S POT TICKETS: THE SCANDAL BEHIND THE SCANDAL

One Officer Wrote Nearly 80 Percent of the City's Marijuana 
Citations. Why Was That Fact Hidden From Chief Kathleen O'toole?

The bad news came in three waves. The first came on July 23, when the 
Seattle Police Department once again made cringeworthy national 
headlines, this time for the way cops were issuing tickets to people 
caught using marijuana in public.

"African Americans Disproportionately Cited for Public Pot Use in 
Seattle," blared the New York Times. According to a report released 
that day by SPD researchers, Seattle cops issued 32.9 percent of pot 
tickets to black people in the first half of 2014, even though black 
people make up less than 8 percent of the city's population. White 
people, meanwhile, received only 50 percent of the tickets, even 
though they make up about 70 percent of the city's population. 
(Several studies have found white and black people use pot at similar rates.)

This sort of enforcement disparity is not in itself shocking. The US 
Department of Justice noted "serious concerns about biased policing" 
at the SPD in a 2011 report, and that was one of the reasons the Feds 
pushed the city into a federal court settlement in 2012 to reform the 
police force.

What was surprising was that the SPD researchers' report on the 
problematic marijuana tickets didn't explain why there had been such 
a disparate impact on minorities. It merely said that police handed 
out nearly all of the tickets around Third Avenue downtown, Victor 
Steinbrueck Park, and Occidental Park. Those parks are places where 
homeless people tend to congregate, and Third Avenue downtown is 
lined with bus stops used heavily by people of color.

The second wave of bad news arrived a week later, on July 30. In an 
internal memo whose existence was first reported by The Stranger, 
Chief Kathleen O'Toole told her police force that she had discovered 
nearly 80 percent of all the city's marijuana citations were in fact 
issued by the same police officer. That news wound up making another 
round of national headlines.

The fact that this critical information was left out of the SPD 
researchers' report raised more questions, including: Was the federal 
court order to clean up the department being undermined by entrenched 
officers trying to suppress unflattering information?

O'Toole's memo explained that the officer, who records identify as 
West Precinct bike cop Randy Jokela, wrote 66 of the 83 tickets for 
smoking marijuana in public between January 1 and June 30, 2014. An 
internal investigation was quickly launched, Jokela was reassigned to 
deskwork, and the inevitable public debate over whether he'd acted 
inappropriately began.

"He's just that proactive of an officer," police union president Ron 
Smith said on KIRO Radio on August 1. "He works, works, works, 
works." And, this argument goes, Jokela was just enforcing the law. 
When voters legalized marijuana possession in Washington State in 
2012, they also made pot use in plain view an infraction. The Seattle 
City Council then made the offense punishable by $27 and additional 
fees. Smith argued that cops have a duty to write tickets to 
lawbreakers who use pot in public.

But Officer Jokela wasn't writing ordinary tickets.

Jokela wrote descriptions on the citations that called the state's 
marijuana-legalization law "silly." On many of the tickets, he added, 
"Attn Petey Holmes" (an apparent reference to City Attorney Pete 
Holmes, who backed the "silly" legalization law and the ticket). And 
there are other concerns with Jokela's citations. City law says that 
whenever practical, officers are guided to provide a "first warning" 
to people smoking pot in public. But fewer than 10 percent of 
Jokela's pot tickets mention giving suspects a warning. Finally, 
Officer Jokela wrote on one citation that he used a coin toss to 
decide which of two suspects would pay the fine.

"The comments on these things were totally inappropriate," says Chief 
O'Toole, explaining why she thought the officer should be 
investigated. "Police officers need to be impartial with the 
application of the law."

Lisa Daugaard, the public policy director of the Public Defender 
Association, also raises issues with the citations. "It is concerning 
that enforcement appears to be concentrated downtown and not in other 
neighborhoods where those violating the law are likely to be more 
affluent and white," she says.

But that was not the end of it, either.

The third stage of bad news sits in the stack of actual tickets 
written by Officer Jokela. The Stranger, through a public records 
request, obtained copies of those tickets. I then conducted my own 
analysis of Officer Jokela's citations, and having seen every one of 
the tickets, it seems highly unlikely that the SPD researchers, Loren 
Atherley and Mark Baird, could have failed to realize that one cop 
wrote most of them. Officer Jokela's name is on each citation. They 
also feature unmistakable large block letters saying "ATTN PETEY 
HOLMES," contain numerous references to "primo" weed, and describe 
numerous instances of approaching people in Victor Steinbrueck Park. 
My analysis shows that Officer Jokela wrote 67 out of the 85 
marijuana tickets between January 1 and June 30, 2014 (it's unclear 
why the O'Toole-released count put him at a slightly different 66 of 
83 marijuana tickets for the same period). My analysis also shows 
that Officer Jokela's tickets exhibit a slightly more pronounced 
racial disproportionality than the tickets written by other officers 
(Jokela gave 54 percent of his tickets to people of color, according 
to the records, while other cops collectively gave 45 percent of 
their tickets to people of color).

Atherley and Baird declined to comment for this story, so their 
version of events remains unknown. O'Toole says that when Atherley 
and SPD chief of staff Mike Washburn met with her in her office, in 
July, to ask her to sign off on the report, "there was no mention of 
one individual or any particular anomalies in the research."

"I see this as relevant information that should have been reported 
since it is obviously of prime importance," says Council Member Nick 
Licata, who sponsored legislation creating the ticket and requiring the report.

Beyond that, this mystery goes straight to the core of the police 
department's troubles: How well is reform proceeding if something 
like this can happen? Are mid-level staff hiding damaging information 
from the chief? And can she prevent it from happening again?

O'Toole says she didn't hear about the problems until six days after 
the SPD transmitted the report to the city council. "It was after 
work hours, and three people on my staff called and said there are 
some significant concerns about this report," O'Toole recalls. She 
says she heard the news from SPD chief operating officer Mike Wagers, 
the SPD's Virginia Gleason, and Sergeant Sean Whitcomb. "They said, 
'Did you know 80 percent were written by one officer?' I said, 'I 
didn't know that.' That was first I learned." O'Toole then made the 
decision to share the news publicly.

Why did it take whistleblowers to bring this to the chief's 
attention, instead of the researchers who were paid to report this 
sort of thing? Did someone in the chain of command try to suppress 
the information?

"I always have concerns if someone suspects there could be a 
potential cover-up, but I can't jump to conclusions at this point," 
O'Toole says. She says this investigation extends beyond Officer 
Jokela. "We have to figure out who was involved and the chronology of 
it all," she said, adding that "researchers, supervisors, and command 
staff will be questioned to determine who knew what when-and what 
they did about it."

But O'Toole and others aren't waiting to make changes. "Going 
forward, this report will be compiled by someone completely 
independent of the SPD," O'Toole says. "I will guarantee you that." 
Which is good. The report was supposed to be conducted by Katherine 
Becket, a social scientist at UW who had a draft contract to do this 
report-until that contract was scotched in January by interim police 
chief Harry Bailey and the new mayoral administration.

Council Member Licata also notes that officers should be providing 
warnings before issuing pot tickets (only 8 of the 85 citations 
mention warnings). "I would expect the police chief to inform her 
command staff to let their officers know what is expected of them," 
Licata says. Daugaard reminds that cops need to enforce public pot 
rules equally, not just in places with high populations of people of 
color and poor people. "It will be important that the same approach 
is taken in Green Lake, the University District, and Capitol Hill as 
is applied downtown," she says.

The other outstanding question: Will the city quash these tickets, 
given that they're tarnished with one officer's political overtones, 
were given disproportionately to people of color, and mostly were 
handed out without a record of a first warning? That decision is up 
to City Attorney Holmes. He did not respond to questions by press time.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom