Here’s what police chief candidate Sean Case has to say about issues facing Tacoma
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Choosing the next chief
Meet the finalists in the running to lead the Tacoma Police Department.
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Here’s what police chief candidate Sean Case has to say about issues facing Tacoma
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Sean Case thinks Tacoma is on the precipice of change, and he wants to be part of moving the Police Department forward.
The 44-year-old is one of four candidates being considered to take the helm of the department. City officials have said they will make a decision in December.
Case originally hails from the Midwest, worked for a spell as an officer in Los Angeles but most recently calls Alaska home.
There, he is a captain for the Anchorage Police Department and responsible for internal affairs, patrol and the administrative and inspection divisions. He also consults on police practices for Daigle Law Group.
Case, who loves the outdoors and took up fat biking during the COVID-19 pandemic, wants to move to the Pacific Northwest with his wife and two children. He was a finalist this year for two other police chief positions in Lacey and Olympia.
He cited his passion for people and problem-solving skills as reasons for why he would be a great fit for Tacoma.
“Tacoma has a really great opportunity. There’s challenges both within the Police Department as well as within the community,” Case told The News Tribune. “There are morale issues, state law changes (officers) don’t know how to apply and the public wants different interactions. There’s a local city government that’s supportive and open to looking at different ways of doing policing. Those sorts of things intrigue me.”
Some programs he helped implement in Anchorage could be useful here, Case said.
One worked with Alaskan natives to provide better services in domestic violence incidents, both to the victim and the offender in hopes of reducing those types of crimes. In exchange for having charges dropped, some offenders were given an option to take a class using a decades-old intervention model that highlighted blame on the offender rather than also addressing abuse they may have suffered or how to cope with underlying stressors that lead to domestic violence.
“If we separate the victim and offender and make them mutually exclusive of each other, we’re missing the boat,” Case said, adding that the new program will be culturally sensitive to Alaskan natives.
He also thinks a criminal diversion program could help Tacoma, where people arrested for certain types of crimes would be offered assistance and services rather than being left to the criminal justice system.
Case recognizes that recruiting, hiring and retaining police officers is an ongoing issue in Tacoma and said if hired, he’d like to do a focus group to figure out exactly which groups would best diversify the department. Recruiting efforts could then be targeted toward those people rather than traditional recruiting efforts that focus on attracting a high volume of applicants.
In an interview with The News Tribune, Case talked about several of the bigger issues facing the city and shared his thoughts.
Homelessness is a nationwide issue that police can’t handle alone, and Case said it’s important to balance the concerns of business owners and those living on the streets.
Foot patrols could make business owners feel more comfortable and tamp down on issues like trash and vagrancy, but he thinks homeless people have something to add to the conversation.
“We have to remember they’re still a part of this community and they’re human beings,” Case said. “If we give them the right respect, they’re going to contribute to Tacoma.”
As for the camping ban on public property, he said police could help break down encampments but he’d only be comfortable doing that if there was somewhere warm and safe for homeless people to go.
Frequent and disproportionate use of force is another problem plaguing the city.
A News Tribune analysis this year found officers use force against Black people at roughly fives times the rate they do against white people.
The first step is to admit there is a problem, Case said.
“Numbers don’t lie. Some response I see from law enforcement is that numbers don’t tell the full truth,” he said. “But five times the rate means something; that has significant value.”
Case said ensuring it’s important to ensure a full investigation is done every time an officers strikes someone or uses a weapon and even if the force is found to have been within policy, training should be required. And not just annual training intended to check a box, but in-depth training to help officers learn de-escalation, how to deal with people suffering from mental illness and sensitivity to other cultures.
“Its really about understanding some of the cultural challenges we have within Tacoma,” he said. “If we can’t understand that and accept it, sometimes those contacts we have with anyone of color, they go drastically bad and they result in a police use of force.”
This story was originally published November 29, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
