SEATTLE CHIEF OF POLICE
NORM STAMPER

INTERVIEWED BY BILL LYONS


Seattle's new chief of police, Norm Stamper, is an unusual fellow. Unlike many chiefs he supports civilian review of the police force. He was experimenting with community policing twenty years before it became fashionable. And Chief Stamper hopes to see his role as the city's lead spokesman for community policing taken over by citizens, working with patrol officers on the beat to solve neighborhood problems. The vision of community policing that Chief Stamper lays out in this, Free Press interview should not be glossed over as just the usual slick talk. It may end up being just talk, but what he is saying is anything but usual.


Contrast your vision of community policing with the work of Chief Fitzsimons.

I think it builds on Pat Fitzsimons' vision for community policing in that it takes into account the specialized teams that we already have in the communities. It differs in the sense of the magnitude of the expansion that we would like to see. At some point my vision of community policing is that we will drop the term community, because it will be clearly seen as redundant. If it's not for the community that we do policing, if it's not with the community that we do policing, why are we doing policing? Community policing, as I envision it, reaches deeper levels in the organization and is expanded broadly to include nearly everybody in the department.

In concrete terms, what will that mean for police organization and practice?

We've got a very steep hierarchy. We have a tradition of making a lot of decisions about what's going on in the neighborhoods and communities at the headquarters building. That has to change if this concept is to be successful. We'll do several things.
One is to eliminate one entire rank from the top management of the police department, thereby improving communication. Precinct commanders and their lieutenants and sergeants will have dramatically more authority under the new system. Another is to require of all top management that they take responsibility for supporting community policing. That means that every single one of my bureau chiefs will have not just the right but the responsibility to drift across those organizational boundaries that we historically have confined ourselves to. That has a lot to do with just building a high performance top management team, but it also has a lot to do with making sure that none of us gets isolated and insulated from the realities on the streets. Another major change is found in the ballot proposition that will be before the voters in November. [Editor's note: this measure was defeated] That is a call for the creation of two new neighborhood stations, moving the West Precinct out of the headquarters building and into a site in the neighborhood, and the creation of a special support facility which would house traffic, a special patrol unit, and in all likelihood vice, narcotics, gangs and various other units. The key to it all is-to use the fashion able term-to empower our front-line professionals. Reducing decision-making authority and responsibility, to use the traditional term, so that decisions that were formerly made by the chief of police or the captain are now being made by beat cops and detectives, who are the closest to and the most aware of the kinds of problems that communities are facing.

That idea can create some problems for patrol officers who want to get promoted. What kinds of new evaluation criteria are emerging to connect up their new responsibilities with their career aspirations?

We've got to find a way to find out what the disparate communities might be experiencing with respect to police services and police practices in the area. We've got to find a way to assess community perceptions of police performance and conduct. We need to look at the officer's problem-solving effectiveness, not merely his or her capacity to harvest numbers and to produce activity. I'd just as soon abandon our current performance evaluation instruments.

This seems to promise a battle with the Police Guild in the next collective bargaining agreement.

It could portend major battles, because we're talking about major transformation. We're talking about a fundamental change in the culture of the police department. But what I have heard from my police officers is that they want more authority, they want more responsibility, they want greater freedom and latitude. They don't want to have to raise their hands and ask permission to do some bold, creative imaginative things. I think they also want to be held to standards that are reasonable and non-discriminatory and certainly job-related. And as the jobs change what we will find is that a whole lot of police officers will say to themselves, "Geez, this is why I hired on in the first place. This is police work. This is making a difference in people's lives."

Will your vision of policing assign patrol officers to neighborhoods for longer periods of time?

As a general rule, yes. Partnerships take time. Trust takes time to build. Anything can happen, as we certainly know from that incident on Broadway, that can rupture the trust. If we want to build, over the long haul, trusting relationships, I can't be shifting cops all over the city willy-nilly. We have got to find ways to extend beat tenure.

To what extent was the incident on Broadway handled differently because the department has adopted a community policing philosophy as opposed to a more traditional philosophy?

I can't answer that. I don't have enough history of the organization to really understand that. What I can tell you is that Seattle has a well-earned reputation for expressing community-by-community its interests. It's a blessing that many other cities envy and it poses challenges. How can we facilitate these Americans' right to express themselves, to assemble and to express their views? My beat cops may be antagonistic toward the particular statement that is being expressed, but we have a responsibility to facilitate that, to support it structurally, strategically, tactically, so that it's done safely. And I think that the police department has a very good reputation for handling them well. There were some incidents in the handling of that demonstration two Saturdays ago that we are investigating. Some as a result of my concerns and the concerns of other members of the staff, and some as a result of citizen complaints. We'll investigate those and we'll certainly critique the incident.

How will your vision of policing enhance relations with neighborhoods that distrust the police?

If we can overcome our tendency to assume we know what's best as relates to police practices, and to really hear what our citizens say about their own conditions and their own needs and their own concerns as it relates to crime and violence and the relationship to the police, if we are really good listeners, that will have the effect over time of helping to thaw whatever cold relations might exist or at least to cool off some of the hot relationships that might exist... While we will have our differences in the future, we have a good relationship, and a good relationship can absorb differences and might even come to appreciate them....We know that to develop that kind of relationship we need extended beat tenure. We know that you can't just move police officers around. On the other hand, if we don't move them around, they're going to turn sour on us, they're going to become corrupt....
I don't think we have institutionalized corruption. Any breaches of the public confidence that occur in police departments like Seattle's are episodic. What that means is that we can do some things that maybe thirty years ago any responsible administrator would have been required to reject in the interests of the integrity of the organization. I think we have honest police officers. They want to do the right thing. In many cases it is the structure that is standing in the way of their doing the right thing. ...We will build more integrity, we will sharpen the ethical compass that guides our work as a result of this relationship with the community. Is there a risk? Absolutely.

Will beat cops with extended tenure be more likely to ally themselves with more powerful groups in the community, such as the chamber of commerce, further closing out already marginalized groups?

Our institution does come from a very tainted history. And confronting all of that at the turn of the century was one reform effort that said civil service was the answer. It was a step in the right direction, but it was not the answer. Then the Wickersham Commission in 1930 which brought about some major reforms, and in the process produced some of the very problems that we have today, which is the para-military bureaucratic structure, and iron-fisted police chiefs that believe they can create arbitrary and capricious decisions as a way of life, just imposing them on their police officers. Now we are faced with the unintended consequences of that reform effort. And we are experiencing a new wave of reform, that has brought us to a point now where police are much more likely to be fair or just in their dealings in situations where predictably in the past we would have been aligned. We would have been aligned with landlords in landlord-tenant disputes, automatically. We would have been aligned with management over labor in labor disputes. What helped to change that was police officers recognizing that they are labor. And aligned in merchant-consumer, aligned in husband-wife disputes, you know, "a man's home is his castle." A lot of those tendencies to line up behind the more powerful and dominating forces in society and in the community have been affected by the changes in the past 10 or 15 years in police work. And certainly under community policing there's a very good chance that we will see police officers as very, very strong advocates for the economically disadvantaged and for groups that historically have been on the outs.

Does your vision of community policing include a civilian review board?

I am a very strong supporter of civilian review, civilian oversight. In fact, I believe that we need civilian participation in policy making. I have said for twenty years that we are the people's police, that we belong to the communities that we serve. And that means vastly increased citizen participation in virtually everything that we do. That means a review of citizen complaints and allegations of police misconduct. The question is how to structure it.... I am a believer in the need for radical re form, which some would call revolution, and that is not a word that I use lightly. I think it is time for a fundamental, sweeping change in the way that we think about who we are, who we're here to serve, and what we do. For me that means getting out in to the community, talking about community policing and massive community organization and mobilization. I'll take the risk of helping to raise expectations, knowing that if they are not met that the crash, the fall, can be quite damaging. I don't think we have a choice. We have to believe that something can happen in this country. I think we have to believe that police officers and people in the community, including blind-and-loyal supporters, as well as critics and ideological adversaries, can actually find a way to make a difference at the neighborhood level. I believe that people are looking for a method that will allow us to put our best intentions to work. It's absolutely frightening in some neighborhoods to think about what community policing might really mean. Because for me it does mean direct citizen action. And it means a banding together of the disparate and different forces in the neighborhood and the community, all of whom are aligned under a desire for safety and civility and sanity on the streets. I don't care if you are from the far left or the christian right, or any other philosophical orientation, what matters to me is do you reject violence as a way of life. Do you want to make these streets safe for your children and yourself? If you do, let's find a way to work together. Leaders have to be living emblems of what they represent, what they stand for, what they believe in. I have worked very hard in my life to be able to stand in front of a group and say what is in my heart or in my head... I have to believe the same thing about beat cops and detectives, sergeants and captains, and people in the community. If we can create situations in which we can share our visions and not be embarrassed or ashamed of them, and raise expectations in that process, we damn well better get about that business.

Precinct Advisory Councils are heavily weighted with department-selected people. There is also concern about the composition of Crime Prevention Councils. How will you respond to this?

Change the composition, not by subtracting, but through addition. I do agree... that there is a white, middle-class, Chamber of Commerce kind of orientation to most of these councils. Not all of them, certainly. [It is not] the presence of those people that bothers me. What bothers me is the absence of others. I think chamber people are desperately needed. I think the PTAs, and the religious institutions and the other community-based organizations, the folks who officially represent those institutions need to be at the table. The answer is to bring more diversity into those groups. That to me represents a two-way street: a recruiting effort on our part and an insistence on the part of the community that they be involved. I don't believe in Americans asking permission to work with their government. I think you show up and you say, "I am a player. I'm involved. And I represent...", say as an African American mother, "...a variety of concerns, not the least of which is the relationship the police department has with youth in our neighborhoods. And I want you to hear some things." And that's what has to happen. We'll reach out for it.

Readers of the Free Press are likely to wonder about the possibility or even desirability of a more responsive police department. What would be your message for our readers?

I guess I would say is that if the last thing you want, in the interest of pursuing an ideological perspective, is reasoned and responsible and responsive police work, then I hope to hell that we disappoint you. I hope that even as you pursue a vision of how this society ought to be structured, and you express your concerns about economic and other forms of injustice, that you recognize that when you need a cop, when people are being hurt, that it is far better that the police officer that shows up is sensitive and tough, in the best sense of that word, and can help you handle the situation.... The potential for taking that institution that is most visible and more often than not aligned with people and interests that do not represent your readership, and converting that into something that says we are all the people's police, is real. That potential is very high. Community policing is not about doing in one neighborhood precisely what you do in every other neighborhood. That's one of its inherent risks, the inconsistency, the favoritism, but is also its greatest virtue. It means that the policing that we do in a particular neighborhood fits, it makes sense. To me, the real calling here, and the vision that I have, is that we begin to value and to celebrate our differences. Because that is the strength of this country and that is the strength of the community.



COMMENTARY


The Role for Communities in Community Policing Begins With Questioning Authority

by Bill Lyons

Community policing in Seattle started in the South Precinct following the corruption scandal that rocked the department in the late 1960s. At the same time, citizens in the Southeast, with a long tradition of citizen action on a wide range of issues, turned their attention to crime control. Despite resistance from then-chief Fitzsimons, citizens in the Southeast succeeded in forcing the department to establish a police-community partnership in 1989 that the National Institute of Justice has called a model of community policing.

Seven months ago Norm Stamper rode into town, with new ideas, interested in dialogue with Seattle residents. Consider the invitation serious. Treat it as a challenge. Ask him or your local beat cop or precinct commander those hard questions about how he plans to make good on all these promises. But don't just assume you'll get the same old answers and evasions. There is a new drama unfolding around us and we are being cast in leading roles. Here are some questions to think about.

HOW will the police department ensure that beat cops will not favor the concerns of those in our communities who already have more power, voice, and resources?
HOW will the department restructure performance evaluation to match the career aspirations of police officers to solving community problems, rather than just accumulating arrests and citations?
HOW will the department make marginalized communities feel welcome on Crime Prevention Councils? HOW can the department justify creating Precinct Advisory Councils, with members hand-selected by the department, which duplicate and compete with Crime Prevention Councils and other community groups?
WHEN will the department address the fear of police harassment as vigorously as the fear of crime in our communities?
HOW can the African American woman Stamper imagined himself hearing from expect the chief to use the considerable power at the disposal of the police department to ensure that voices like hers, the voices of people who likely work two jobs but still lack the resources available to others in the community, are better able to participate as equals in this dialogue he envisions?

Ask the chief. Stamper's vision is a radical one. But it is still just a vision. Those interested in improving public safety in Seattle, without simply unleashing the worst tendencies in a para-military police force, would be well served by studying his vision, going to hear him speak, and carefully formulating their own probing questions. Chief Stamper is unusual in that he is open to discussion and to being persuaded. Let's take up his challenge.



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Contents on this page were published in the December/January 1995 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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Bill Lyons