Hi folks. It's Aaron. This week I was joined on the radio show by the other Aaron on staff, but recently put out a big story on deescalation and what exactly that word means to the Spokane police force. I have been really struggling to write an intro. So I think I'm going to keep it short and simple. Listen to the podcast. And if you're not much of the listener, what are you doing here? Reid has a story. Hi folks, you're listening to KYRS MedicaLake Spokane. This is Free Range, a co production of KYRS and Range Media. I'm Erin, and this week I'm flying solo as a host while Luke does important boss coded things. But I'm joined by my fellow reporter and fellow Erin, Aaron Hedge, to talk about his most recent story on police violence in Spokane and how that could be impacted by ideas around what exactly constitutes de escalation. Hedge, how are you doing this week? I'm doing pretty good. I'm glad to have the story out. It was a, it was a, it was an odyssey, but I'm glad to be here. Alright, so a quick note for our listeners. As reporters, we are juggling so much information from so many sources all the time. And when we publish our final written product, we fact check everything, and our editors do too. Talking off the cuff like this about a story is a little scary for a reporter, because it could be It comes with less of a safety net. We might get a tiny thing wrong here and there that we otherwise would have been able to run past an editor or compare against our notes. We are going to obviously do our best to get every single detail perfect, but we might not. And when you get off the road or away from your radio or whatever, you can read our full story at kyrs. org slash show slash free dash range. If you wanna get the full picture. Alright, so, on Tuesday, Hedge, I saw you frantically run into the office, drop your backpack off, and head out to somewhere. What were you up to? So on Tuesday, about midday, I was I was headed to a regular protest that is organized by Debbie Novak, who is the mother of David Novak, who was killed by Spokane police in 2019 on January 7th, which was Tuesday. This is the sixth anniversary of his death. It's the 72nd protest that Debbie has organized. Oh, so when you say regular, are you talking every week since it's every month on the 7th of the month. And it's to commemorate the day that he was, that he, um, it's less to commemorate it than it is to try to bring him justice. And a monthly reminder that this is a huge problem in Spokane. Okay, so there's this protest every month at the what? The Spokane County Courthouse, right outside of it on Broadway there. Okay and Debbie's trying to, remind people about what happened to her son to seek accountability and justice from the Spokane police, and I think one thing you told me that I thought was particularly interesting, Debbie's monthly The 7th of the month protest is not the only monthly police accountability protest there is, right? No, I believe since she started people have been joining her for these protests. I think every person that I saw out there on Tuesday had either had a friend or a family member, some loved one, who was you know. Who is killed by police brutality here in Spokane. Each case is different but they have a lot of common threads. And recently in the last couple of years, I think a couple of more families have started hosting regular monthly protests that are very similar. The family of Bjorn Manycolors his mother, Cynthia, holds a. Holds a very similar protest on the 4th of every month from 5 to or from 4 to 5 in the afternoon. And then, the family of Don Hegel who was killed by the Spokane County Sheriff's deputies holds A very similar protest on the 29th of each month. That's the day of the month both of those both of those family members were killed. And so it seems to be a growing thing. And what's really striking to me about that is it's just a really accessible way of understanding the scope of this problem. When you go out there and it's not a huge crowd, but it's a lot of people. It's, it's probably between a dozen and two dozen people who all had a family member or a friend or a loved one who, who was killed by police and I think that's significant because it suggests that this is a common problem that is across Spokane. Was this the first one of these protests that you'd been to? Yes. And how did it feel to attend it? What were you thinking as a reporter? Well, so, so I go there and, I, and I don't know all the stories. I, this is my first police accountability story that I've ever written about. So I've never written about this before and I go there with very little context and I see people who I don't know and I approach them And it's a humbling experience to approach these people and say, just like understanding as you walk up to them that they've had this awful tragedy and that's why they're there in their life. And they're, it's not it's a, there's a somber nature to the event just because of the topic matter, but they're the protesters are there in good spirits. They were all, they were smiling, they were laughing together. But I have to approach them and acknowledge that, a member of their family has died many reporters have to do. And they're always willing to just, lay everything they know out on, on the table for me. So I walk up to them and I say, My name's Aaron, I'm I'm a reporter, and I'm hoping that I can talk to you about your loved one who died and how you feel, and then you have to get into the nitty gritty of the details, cause a lot of this deals with police policy, and you have to ask them questions about that. Not everybody's focused on that. Some of them are very focused on that, but not everybody is. Yeah. It's just it's one of the more real raw experiences in reporting and it was clarifying Just about the scope of this issue that I've never really engaged with before, so it was humbling. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so actually, let's back up. What exactly is this story that you went to this protest for? Was it just a generic story about police violence, or was there some sort of specific question you were trying to answer? So it's been in the news recently that the Spokane Police Department, it consistently ranks among the top ten deadly police departments in the entire United States. We're currently ranked as number three by the police accountability organization mapping police violence. And that's something that's, it's pretty widely reported, most of the papers have reported on it, we've reported on that. This is like a per capita number, right? Per capita, thank you, yeah. So, but the Underneath that, a lot of the advocates that I've talked to and some of the actual government watchdogs that I've talked to feel that part of the reason that Spokane police are so violent is a school of thought among some police, and I don't know how many police feel this way that up to lethal force constitutes a form of de escalation. De escalation is just basically, it's a police practice where they're trying to Lower the Just lower, lower the danger in a potentially dangerous situation or tense situation that they're responding to. Yeah, that makes sense. I, not to interject, it's a funny story during a very serious topic, but I did a ride along with the police I guess it would have been last year now, but like late last year. year and I went out with their behavioral health unit which sort of is supposed to go out and de escalate situations with people who might be experiencing mental health crises or people who might be like frequent flyers of the system, build a relationship with folks, be able to speak their language and be somebody that they can trust because a lot of times, folks living on the streets or folks undergoing a mental health crisis see somebody in uniform and have an instant gut reaction to that and the very first ride along, or very first case I went out on with the police officer I was shadowing was a man undergoing a psychotic break, and he had been stalking a bikini, or just a regular barista. He'd been stalking a barista. Sorry, I've been doing too much bikini barista reporting. And following him. made some vague threats they tried to go and talk to him because he had a diagnosed health condition. He'd had interactions with the police before they knew what was going on with this guy. He was off his meds and this was a pattern for him when he got off his meds, they'd gone to take him in and he had waved a weed whacker at them. So instead of having a confrontation or A situation that might turn violent. At that point they had backed away and left and the officer that I was shadowing had reached back out to this guy over text and started like a kind of, a conversation with him and the man was like, I I'm really interested in being in the special forces. I want to do special investigations for you guys. And so in order to have a conversation. A conversation with this man, and what ended up happening was an involuntary commitment. But in order to get him into a safe space where there was no weapons involved, where there was less possibility of escalation, the officer I was shadowing invited him out to a neutral location where they could go through his resume and talk about how he might end up. in special investigations on the force just to get him to a neutral location where he didn't have a weapon, didn't have a weed whacker, didn't, wasn't on his own turf where police might not know what's going on or what he has access to. And then they were able to safely take in this guy who was, like, I think a veteran with MMA fighting experience. So even without a weapon, they were a little worried it might turn violent. They were able to bring him in without any use of force. He wasn't happy about it. It did turn into an involuntary commitment, but like the whole sort of rigamarole and like the fake setup or whatever was what the officer I was shadowing considered to be an effort of de escalation because it meant that there was going to be no, no use of force whatsoever. That is an excellent example of de escalation. That's exactly. And that tactic of trying to appeal to somebody's interests and being invested in their situation is a central factor in de escalation. If you read any of the literature about it, it will say you want to have empathy and understand the person's situation and, this guy wanted a, he wanted a job the officer who responded recognized that and said, okay let's talk about what you want. And that's precisely what deescalation is. Whereas, I mean, I think we're, I think I, a lot of people in my world at least are very familiar with these really gruesome videos of police shootings that get released often. Months, often years after a killing and what in those videos are often police rushing into situations that they don't fully understand. They might have a little bit of information from a house call or something like that, but it's not, it's never confirmed until they get onto the site and they open, often they open fire or they use up to deadly force. Without even trying to understand what's going on with the person. And this is the thing that happened with a man whose family was protesting on, on, on Tuesday named Robert Bradley. Police had gotten a call that he was carrying around an AR 15 rifle from his neighbor who had some sort of conflict with Robert. And the police showed up to his place, and what he was doing was he was unloading his van from a camping trip and bringing things from his van into his house. And some of those things were guns. And the police, you can see it on the body cam video, the police approach the situation. They I think they enter the scene and within Within five seconds, they identify themselves as police, and within two seconds from them identifying themselves, they've fatally shot Robert Bradley, who later died in the hospital. The city of Spokane. This week, settled with, settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Bradley's fiance. His family still has another his kids, I think, still have another ongoing suit. That's right. So, these things have a tale on them, but in the moment, it's, It's, you're gonna do, you're gonna do one of two things. You're gonna try to, and it's, I mean, there's a spectrum between these two things, but you're gonna try to figure out what's going on with the person and try to like, figure out a peaceful solution to it, and that is de escalation. Or you're gonna go in, the way the Spokane police officers did with Robert Bradley and that's a terrible outcome. And I think most people would prefer. And I haven't talked to anybody who doesn't prefer this the former. Yeah, and you use that phrase, up to lethal force. I, the, that qualifier of up to seems like it's doing a lot of work, cause I can't tell. If that means everything before lethal force can be considered de escalation. I know one of the examples from your story was, oh, if somebody's waving a knife around, and threatening someone with a knife, and you shoot them with a beanbag round, and that causes them to drop the knife, then that has de escalated the situation, because it didn't turn more violent than it needed to. Or does up to include fatally shooting somebody could be considered an act of de escalation? Yeah, it's a really good question, and I think that is, that, that question, that I'm not clear on an answer is part of the problem, because Everybody has, there's a spectrum of definitions of what constitutes de escalation. And the person you just quoted is the president of the police guild, David Duncan. And, I see the logic in that, I do. But I do, it exists in a space that is very in the middle of a, a, a. this idea that up to lethal force constitutes de escalation, and the opposite view, which is that force is never de escalation, which is something that the recently hired police chief of of SPD said to me. He said, force is the antithesis of de escalation. And so there's a broad, there's a broad range of Of under, of understanding. And so, so that phrase, up to I think most of the advocates that I've spoken to interpret that as including killing somebody. And I don't know if everybody would agree with that. So it's a little, it's a little muddy right now. But I'm going to keep reporting and see if I can clarify some of those things. Okay, so, we've got the central conflict here, but I'm unsure, this is a really interesting philosophical debate about what de escalation is, and you've given me the emotional stakes here of, there's these families, and they have these monthly protests to mourn their loved ones that were lost to police violence. Why a story now? So last month, the police ombuds which is an office, it's an oversight office that is basically a civilian Check on police and it's it's gotten a little bit more power in recent years and it's been issuing these reports that and some of its reports, it gives reports to a body called the the ombuds commission and that commission can make recommendations, but it doesn't have a lot of power. But the ombudsman Bart Logue issued a report in December. That examined a case where a police, a Spokane police officer had exerted force on a person who was actually a victim of a reported assault. And this person got injured, and it went through a review process, and it ended up in the Purview of a body called the Use of Force Review Board, which normal citizens don't really have a good eye on. It's not explicitly secret. I was able to get some information about who is on this board and how it works, and there's actually a public document that describes how it works and how it's formed. But in, in that Use of Force Review Board meeting where they reviewed this case, Some of the officers, well, I'm just going to quote from the report. The report reads and they're, they don't the ombuds report of what happened at the meeting. Yes. Okay. I mean, they reviewed the case too, but it partly reports on what happened at the meeting. And it says at the review board, a question was asked if there was any other steps the officer could have taken prior to using force. One member stated that we could have used lethal force. And then there's an ellipsis. And then it says, And for those of you who don't do journalism, an ellipsis means that we're omitting a chunk of text that maybe is not directly relevant to the quote. So sometimes somebody will write something and then they'll go off track and then they'll come back to the point that they're trying to make. So we just omitted something for space here, is what that means. Thanks for clarifying. I often get lost in the jargon. Then it goes on to say, one member even stated, up to lethal force can be de escalation. When the ombudsman Bartlow explained that to the commission, you could feel people get very uncomfortable. And a lot of the commissioners felt that sentiment is incorrect and that any kind of force does not constitute de escalation. And so that's the timeliness, right? This report was issued there's a report that's going to be issued this coming month, on it's going to be discussed at the January 21st meeting of the Ombudsman Commission, the Ombuds Commission, and it's going to contain some similar information about a different case. And so I'm really Kind of sitting on pins and needles to read that report. Hedge, you talked to a lot of people for this story, and you started touching on this right before our sponsor break. I was really interested in your conversation with Police Chief Kevin Hall, who was just recently hired over the summer to replace the former Police Chief Craig Meidel. This is like a little city government jargon for you, but essentially, when a mayor changeover happens, a lot of the positions within the city are appointed by the mayor. And so, if a mayor doesn't want to, like a new mayor comes in, She might not want to keep some of these leadership positions that are filled by the mayor. Craig Meidel didn't give her the option. He resigned. So she was left with a vacancy, and after an extensive community engagement process, they ended up with Chief Hall. So, And again, like I said, Hedge, you started to touch on this, but I see a lot of presentations from this man. And actually just this week, I saw some numbers that I think ended up in your story, which showed a pretty sharp drop off in use of force incidents from SPD post 2019. And Hall did something that I think a lot of police chiefs are unwilling to do. He credited state legislation and police reforms with reducing SPD's use of force. Can you tell me more about Hall's stance on this philosophical debate over de escalation and it's meaning and where this new police chief stands so that we might know what folks in Spokane can expect out of the next three years? Yeah, it's a really good question because there's there's a little bit of, I don't want to say like a mythology, but there's people talk about Chief Hall a lot and people have, there's a lot of folks who have a lot of hope in him because, he's, they see him as somebody who really wants to reduce police violence, and yeah, I think that, That expression, that, that attribution of that drop in use of force at SPD to state regulation, which most police departments aren't too stoked about really backs that up. Chief Hall told me that he has been, he spent the first several months of his tenure just figuring out the department and like just understanding the culture. But I do perceive him that same way. He did say to me, he said He said that de escalation is never force. He called it the antithesis of force. And he defined, I asked him what de escalation means to him. And to be clear, he did say that sometimes force is necessary in situations, but it never constitutes de escalation. He told me that de escalation means, quote, slowing things down, providing distance if possible, gaining cover, and then using your critical decision making skills to determine a path forward, if possible, without using force. And that's similar to that experience with the ride along that you did. Trying to figure out Everything that you can do in a situation before you try to use force. That it's a last resort. So there's, There's a lot of Hope built around Chief Hall. I did talk to Jim Leidy, who's a, He was at the protest on Tuesday and he I talked to him about this and asked him if he had hope and he said there's, there's potential for some good things. He, he did seize on this most recent police killing out, I believe as it was in the Hilliard neighborhood. And I'm not sure if that made it into my story, but a man was killed by police in an apartment building. And he, Jim believes that the police chief has the authority to release the names of the officers. And he has, Chief Hall has not done that, and he, Jim takes that as, a signal that, maybe it's not gonna move as fast as people want it to toward police accountability. But Chief Hall also did tell me that he is very interested in the idea of reforming these use of force boards that my story focused on. Because currently who sits on these these review boards? What are the, what do they currently look like? So the chairperson, according to the policy, the chairperson of the Of the use of force review board is the department's training director and that is a man named Lieutenant Kurt. Oh, his last name is escaping me right now. I'll have to like back up and figure that out. Kurt Reese. Thank you. Lieutenant Kurt Reese. I appreciate that. And Lieutenant Kurt Reese and I tried to get in touch with him through the PIO, but I, so I haven't spoken to him because they didn't get back to me. But, um, he's charged with choosing the members of the Use of Force Board. The deputy of ombuds Luvy Mae Omana told me that, there's not really like a methodology for picking people who want to be on the use of force board. Often it relies on when they need certain types of expertise, they'll go find somebody who has expertise in a certain area and bring them onto the board. Um, I do have names of some of the members in including the training director, but some of the lower level members, we don't really know who they are. They're not open to the public. You would have to have some special access. Ombuds Logue told me that if I wanted to go sit in those meetings, it's a possibility, but I'd have to, I'd have to Really make some people like me to get that to happen, which is a project I'm seriously considering. You're on your make everybody love hedge campaign. I'm a charming guy, but the argument from folks like Lady is that this is just a shadowy board, a shadowy oversight board, which We know there's officers on it. We don't know who they are. We don't know what they're saying. We don't know how they're making decisions. It just feels very murky and like it's not out in the open or not transparent enough. Is that lady's argument? You really have to drag information out of that board. You have to work really hard, including the officers. The O. P. O. commission, like they, they feel like they don't have a good window into what happens on the, on that board. And it's entirely made up of police officers, with the exception of Of the ombuds representative Luvy May and the note taker and the note taker is an employee of the police department. Luvy May told me that there should be a diversity of perspectives on these boards because it's a policy reform oriented board. It's not about. They don't do work that's trying to punish officers for doing something wrong, like circumventing department policy they're trying to figure out if the policy is bad and if the policy should be reformed. And so, the people if there's Her argument was that if it's entirely staffed by police officers who tend to look at incidents of police violence through the lens of, did it follow the policy, then you're gonna get people who kinda just write off incidents. Whereas if you have somebody with and she has a JD from Gonzaga, but if you have somebody with kind of a, an outside perspective on the board, they'll be thinking, More along the lines of is this policy good? Do we want this stuff to keep happening? Right rather than did this technically follow the policy and that was the crux of The reforms that Chief Hall was talking to me about he didn't really address The transparency issues, but he talked about possibly like Looking at remaking the makeup of these boards and to be clear Chief Hall doesn't really have a lot of power there. That Is that, would this be the union? Would this be the police guilds? That's right, and the police union is extremely powerful. The president, David Duncan, told me that he is open to reforms, but he's not aware of any specific proposals. And I think it's really early in the process, so, any reforms are probably, I would assume that they're years out. But yeah, that's that's the crux of Chief Hall's comments on board reform which I think people would support. And a lot of the advocates I talked to probably also feel that it wouldn't go far enough. So. Okay. So on one hand we have Hall, who seems to agree with these police accountability advocates. Maybe not going quite as far as they would like him to, but in general agreement that maybe some changes need to be made or we need to reevaluate why this violence keeps happening and also that. Force itself is not de escalation. But some of the other key players, and I think we touched on this with the conversation about the police guild, but one of the other key players in your story was David Duncan, who, is he still a police detective or is his sole job president of the police guild? He is currently an active detective with the department. He does police work. Okay, so where did Duncan stand on this? So, we talked earlier about this kind of this spectrum with two ends. One end being that force is never a form of de escalation. And then the other end being, up to lethal force can be a form of de escalation. And Detective Duncan told me that, I'll just read his quote he said deescalation can include all kinds of different things. It's just what is our definition going to be? If somebody's armed with a knife, and this is the example that you were talking about, if somebody's armed with a knife and we shoot them with a bean bag round and they drop the knife, have we stopped them from harming themselves or others? Yeah, is that de escalation? Well, I shot him with a beanbag round. That sounds pretty harmful, but we've stopped this incident from getting worse. And his, that comment was couched in kind of this broader narrative about everybody having a different definition of what constitutes de escalation. Police think it's one thing, and that's at odds with with the broader public. And I you know, I can see where, how that logic would build for police officers. Right. I know one of the things we talked about was like, if there is An active shooter, if somebody is like, if there's a mass shooting happening, if somebody has a gun and they are shooting, then yes, there is a use of force there that is necessary. But I think one of the things that you said to me that stuck with me is that there's a difference between use of force being necessary and justified, and between use of force being a de escalation technique. That's right. So, The, I think the, I think probably and the Ombudsman, Bart Logue, is very much in the camp of de escalation is the antithesis of force. Same as Hall. And his office was created through a vote by 70 percent of Spokaneites. So I think that most of the public probably is on the the antithesis end of the argument. Yeah, before this, Luke was giving us, Luke couldn't make it, but he still has lots of opinions. And he was talking about how it's really hard to get 70 percent of anybody to agree to the most basic statements. You could say, people are good, maybe. And 70 percent of Spokane would probably not agree with that but 70%, which is a super majority, decided that they wanted police accountability. They wanted this ombud's office. They wanted Bart Loge, somebody looking over what the police are doing and making decisions about whether or not, and I mean, I guess what I'm confused about is like how much power and oversight Loge actually gets because it seems as you've been talking to me and describing the story, there's just so many like Places where there's red tape or still a lack of transparency, despite the will of the voters. And I guess I'm curious we've heard Logue's stance, we know how he feels, but what power does he actually have to implement this oversight or these changes that might, make our use of force incidents go down? Well, I don't think he has any power to actually make any changes. He's a reporter. He gathers information and He's just like us. He gets it out there in the best way that he can to the public, which is normally through the O. P. O. Commission which he presents reports to. And he makes he, he doesn't just report. He does make recommendations. And one of the recommendations From this out of this report was better training for officers to understand de escalation techniques so that and he's, I think he hopes that, that training will neutralize the view that de escalation, or that use of force can constitute a form of de escalation. So doing, like setting a firm definition for what exactly de escalation is and isn't? Is that what he's hoping to do? And specifically his definition that force is not de escalation. Right. Okay. Okay. So that would make it so that regardless of what these folks in this review board think, whether it's up to lethal force, like all of that would just go away if his definition is accepted. Right. But that recommendation, which was approved by the commission unanimously, along with all of his other recommendations and there were multiple cases in this report, this isn't the sole case He Sorry, I know you got thrown because your phone started ringing. Is that one of your sources about this story? Probably, I don't know, it's fine. So, so what happens after the commission approves the changes is that, that approval is then sent to the police chief and the police chief, Chief Hall, gets to decide whether the department adopts that recommendation. And there's not a formal process for that. Like they don't have to enshrine it in a policy document. They don't have to, they just have to implement it in. And they don't even have to implement it. They just have to decide whether or not they are going to implement it. That's right. And then there's the last step in that is the ombuds can go and like audit the department and try to determine whether that recommendation has actually been adopted. So is there a push right now? Like it seems to me in my limited time covering this that you've got a pretty progressive mayor, you've got a pretty progressive police chief, And, honestly I haven't heard many complaints about Dave Duncan, too, as the head of the police union. And, so, it seems to me if these decisions go through the police chief is there hope or a push for these police accountability advocates to capitalize on this alignment of stars, or? Well, and There's a lot happening at the state level, there's, it's a really dynamic situation right now, which is I think one of the reasons I felt this story was important to report right now, and we can talk about those state, that state level stuff later in the show, but Yeah, there, there's, there is hope and Bart feels that the that the Ombuds office, during his nine years in the position has made a lot of progress toward being able to tell the public things. He's still really restricted. He, he cannot mention any officer's name. Any police guild member's name in any report. He can't do that in writing. He has a little bit more leeway when he's just talking. So, in, in meetings he could possibly Identify a police guild member, but he's very careful about that because the guild contract, if there's any ambiguous language, and there is ambiguous language it can be interpreted one way or the other, and if the police guild has a problem with something that he's doing that they feel has violated the guild contract his section in the guild contract. Then they can take it before an independent arbitrator, basically a court, and the court would decide yes or no, this is what this language means, they interpret it and then they can decide whether BART has violated the contract. And if they do that, they can then take the next step to conclude that, Bart is not operating in good faith under the contract and they can just get rid of him who would make up this court I'm not entirely clear on that. He called it. He called it arbitration And there was a qualifier for the arbitration. Sorry. I'm not like Sorry, I didn't mean to push you into the weeds. And this is also a thing I should know is when is this contract, this Police Guild contract, up for renegotiation? As a City Hall reporter, I really should have that date just burned into my brain. I don't. Do you know it? This, the current contract covers from 2023 to 2026, so it'll be up in the next couple of years. Okay. And Alright, switching tack a little bit, but not that much one of the sources you talked to, Lady, recently testified at a Spokane City Council meeting, which is where I spend all of my Monday nights, and he brought up a point that I actually found kind of bonkers. One of the arguments in support of police, justifying their recent shootings, weaponized contracts to give Families settlements have to be approved by city council, which means that they have to take public commentary. So I have to listen to a lot of people talking about whether it is or is not okay for somebody to have gotten shot by police. And one of the arguments I keep hearing is that, well, It was a justified shooting, so why are we paying out their family? And whether a shooting is considered justified or not is decided by the county prosecutor. In these recent wave of settlements, the county prosecutor had found that the shootings were justified, but Lady brought up something that I didn't know, which was that spoken county prosecutor Larry Haskell, who has his own slew of drama and scandals, has actually never found a single police shooting unjustified? Um, which is crazy to me. And he rules on the SPD and the sheriffs. Is that right? The Spokane County sheriffs? That's right. And so, from those two departments, he has never found a single shooting unjustified. This is, this gets the heart of some of the stuff that's happening at the state level. Debbie Novak does not feel the settlement, the four million dollar settlement that Spokane paid out to her family in, I believe it was 2022? Was justice for David. She's, I think she's she's still working. But she, uh, she's like, Writing on that money a little bit, I think, to do her advocacy. Right, I, sorry, I want to add in one note here from your story that I think is so important for people who are listening. Debbie Novak used to work as a police dispatcher. She used to patrol with SPD. And her son was shot and killed by the police. And now she's become a police reform advocate. So I think a lot of times people have a picture in their head of what a police reform advocate looks like. Whether that's good or bad. Novak's life was changed by this, and this is how she ends up here. That's right, and I think that's one of the really compelling turns in that story that isn't, hasn't been explored. And I've spoken at length with Debbie about her her experience as a dispatcher. And she, and it was a long time ago, it was in the 90s, but but yeah, this was not her first contact with Spokane police. And she's she was troubled by a lot of what she saw on those patrols, and hopefully I can get, dive into the details of that in a future story. But she, so she is advocating her bit, her kind of That the policy that she's hoping will be implemented at the state level would be legislation that would create an office of an independent prosecutor. So in 2020, here's a little to set the table a little bit. In 2021, the state created an office of independent investigations and it's. still in a like very like small fledgling state, but it's it started doing some of its investigations into deadly force cases. It's it actually announced its first investigation and it's possibly going to look into David Novak's case in the future. But this office can take uses some cases where police killed somebody and investigate it. And what they do is they take the results of that investigation and that establishing that record is a very good public service, but as that office is currently structured, they would send their recommendations about whether the officer should be prosecuted back to the local prosecutor. So we would end if David Novak's case, which Larry pointed out, Larry Haskell said was justified, was investigated by the OII, it would go back to Larry Haskell again. Who is again, never found a single case unjustified. So, this Office of an Independent Prosecutor, and there is draft legislation for this, and I don't, I'm not totally sure if it's gonna be up for a vote this coming session, but the coming legislative session in Olympia, but If that's, if that is created, then the OII would send its reports to the Office of Independent Prosecutions, which would be a state level office, completely independent of So like a state prosecutor would then rule on this case instead of a local prosecutor, where there may or may not be corruption issues. Well, local prosecutors community with their local police, and that's perceived as a really cozy relationship. And I think that there's a perception that a lot of the, Larry Haskell's I guess his allegiances are with the local police and the Office of Independent Prosecutors, a state level office, would not have at least that perceived conflict of interest. Right. Okay. So we're coming up close to the end of our hour. I was curious if there, was there anything else I didn't ask you about the reporting process that was particularly interesting or challenging? You mentioned this was your first time reporting on police and I guess I was curious if there was any insights. I think that it's, it's really, it was really striking to me, most people, most of the advocates that I spoke with, and just like normal people who had lost loved ones to local police, they, they understand that police violence is troubling and bad in the worst way, worse than anybody who hasn't been through that situation understands it. A lot of them weren't aware. That there was a use of force review board. A lot of them don't have a really good handle on just, because they're normal working people who are busy and they have lives and they have families that and they don't have time to dive into the details of all this stuff like reporters do or people who've maybe have gotten a settlement might do. And so I think that the situation that I got to know a little bit is much more complicated than most people understand and it deals with, and that's why Debbie advocates for state level reform is because she thinks that, we need set systemic solutions to these problems that crop up in individual communities, but are. Recognizable across Patterns. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Does that make sense? It does. I think, one of the things I was really proud of you for with this story was how much you centered the folks who are really impacted by this and how much you got at the emotional core of what's going on with the people who've been impacted by what can and sometimes turns into a philosophical tug of war, but at its heart it's something that impacts real people and I wanted to end this segment by reading the quote you ended your story with from Debbie Novak, she said, It's police. Everything's about the police. When is it our turn? When is it going to be about the people? When are they going to hear our voices and not just the police? And I think that's what sticks with me from your story. I think that's what the story is. Yeah. Alright folks, this has been an episode of Free Range. That is our time for the week. Luke's not here to read his half of the pre recorded whatever, so, or pre written whatever, so I'm gonna do it myself. Do you have questions about local government? Are you wondering who to complain to about an issue in your neighborhood? Wondering which agency governs certain things? Wondering why something is happening, or how much it costs you, the taxpayer? Email us at freerange at kyrs. org with your questions, and we'll try and answer them next week.