Auditors have cited concerns with Seattle police jaywalking stops

Auditors who oversee complaints against Seattle police officers have repeatedly expressed concerns about jaywalking stops and minor street confrontations that escalate into physical altercations, and they say better training is needed.

At least four auditor reports since 2004 — the most recent last year — have flagged the issue, which is receiving renewed attention in the wake of Monday's videotaped jaywalking stop in which an officer punched a 17-year-old girl after she shoved him.

"It is just awful it is again a jaywalking incident," said Kate Pflaumer, who served as civilian auditor in the Seattle Police Department's Office of Professional Accountability from 2003 to 2009. "It's very distressing."

Pflaumer, in an interview Wednesday, declined to address Monday's incident but said the department hasn't done enough de-escalation training to teach officers how to deal with jaywalkers who ignore them, challenge their authority and get upset because they don't think they have committed an important infraction.

"It's a difficult crux for officers, and I think it takes a lot of training," said Pflaumer, a former U.S. attorney in Seattle.

Interim Police Chief John Diaz said late Wednesday afternoon that he has ordered the captain and lieutenant who oversee the department's training to study additional training in de-escalation techniques.

Diaz, who is one of two finalists to become permanent police chief, said he provided some ideas and asked for recommendations "not a year from now, but immediately."

He said officers already are taught de-escalation techniques during training scenarios, ranging from minor to major incidents, but that it hasn't been enough.

Sgt. Sean Whitcomb, a Seattle police spokesman, said Wednesday that the department has, for years, used a program called "Street Skills" to teach the best practices to officers. Included are mock scenes designed to get officers to use verbal commands to defuse situations that don't require force, Whitcomb said.

Diaz said that although police officers hold a dangerous job and need citizens to act civilly, the department needs to take the "extra step" of maintaining good relations with the community. Police say they ticket jaywalkers because a number of people in Seattle have been injured and killed dashing out into traffic in areas where drivers can't see them.

Jaywalking near the site of Monday's incident, across Rainier Avenue South and especially near Franklin High School and north of South McClellan Street, was cited as a major safety problem in the city's 2006 action plan for a safer Rainier corridor.

The plan, which kicked off in April 2006, called for Seattle police to target jaywalkers there with added safety patrols. In the five previous years, there had been 61 accidents involving pedestrians who were jaywalking on Rainier Avenue (compared with 33 on Aurora Avenue in North Seattle).

In Monday's incident, according to police reports, Officer Ian P. Walsh stopped a 19-year-old woman for jaywalking on Martin Luther King Jr. Way South near Rainier Avenue. A pedestrian overpass was nearby. After she refused to identify herself for a citation and tried to walk away from him, Walsh grabbed her by the arm and she offered further resistance. As he was trying to handcuff the woman, the 17-year-old girl intervened, grabbing and pushing Walsh, who responded by punching her in the face.

Police arrested the girl and woman.

Leaders of Seattle's African-American community called Walsh's punch an overreaction, while also criticizing the 17-year-old's behavior. Both the girl and woman are black, while Walsh is white.

In the aftermath, the department announced Tuesday that Diaz had ordered a full review of the department's training procedures after a videotape of the incident was repeatedly broadcast on Seattle television stations and media websites. The department also opened a separate internal investigation of Walsh's actions and temporarily transferred him into the training unit to review his tactics.

In a 2006 report, Pflaumer wrote that she found it "distressing to see how many of the excessive force complaints begin with minor street confrontations: Over jay walking, possible impounding of a car, or even, in one case, refusal to show an officer a 'receptacle' for disposing of dog waste."

Pflaumer noted that citizens "often do not show officers respect or attention" when confronted over minor offenses.

"When they verbally challenge or disregard orders given, it often leads officers to respond more harshly than warranted," she wrote.

Even before Monday's incident, the department was under fire over the April 17 videotaped kicking of a prone Latino man by two officers who used ethnically inflammatory language before realizing they had the wrong person in a robbery.

Pflaumer, in the interview, said although there has been some de-escalation training by the Police Department, it needs to do more role-playing exercises even if they are time-consuming.

"While the force ultimately used in any given case may have become necessary, earlier actions could have helped defuse the hostility and calm the situation," Pflaumer wrote in her 2006 report.

Last year, a new auditor, Michael Spearman, who had served as a King County Superior Court judge, cited similar concerns. "What stood out most often was the number of instances in which citizen/officer contact escalated from innocuous to the use of force situation," he wrote in a report.

Spearman, who left the job after being appointed in March to the state Court of Appeals, noted that on many occasions, the initial contact stemmed from a jaywalking allegation that escalated when the citizen failed to comply with an officer's order to stop.

In some cases, Spearman wrote, the failure to stop resulted from inattention or bad judgment and, in other instances, from a belief — right or wrong — that the officer was motivated by racial bias. He also urged the Police Department to intensify the training of officers in de-escalation techniques to minimize the use of force.

"Certainly, when an officer observes a jaywalking or other minor infraction, there is some obligation to make an effort to either cite the offender or in some way encourage compliance with the law," Spearman wrote. "However, whether the use of force in this situation is a best practice is questionable."

Steve Miletich: 206-464-3302 or smiletich@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times staff reporter Craig Welch contributed to this report.