WSP Chief addresses persistent questions about racial bias and workforce diversity

John Batiste, Chief of the Washington State Patrol, said when he saw the video of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis police custody, “my heart pained me ... to see how that man was treated.”

Batiste, who is Black and has served as Chief since 2005, said: “As a Black man ... that could have been me. I have brothers. It could have been any of my brothers. I have grandsons. It could have been one of my grandsons.”

Changes are needed in law enforcement and society to “move the state, the nation and the world in the right direction of treating people fairly and equitably,” said Batiste, who began to work for the Patrol in 1976 as a trooper.

On Friday, Batiste and other agency leaders answered questions from reporters for two hours at the Patrol’s Academy in Shelton. Members of the Patrol’s Rapid Deployment Force, which has become embroiled in the controversy over law enforcement’s response to protests in Seattle over police brutality, displayed some of its techniques.

The press conference came at a critical time for the Patrol, which also faces persistent questions about racial bias in traffic stops and searches, and about insufficient workforce diversity.

Earlier this month, Batiste apologized to the public after a video showed a member of the Rapid Deployment Force telling his fellow officers “Don’t kill them, but hit them hard” as they prepared to clear protesters from Seattle streets.

The incident is under investigation to make sure it’s not a systemic problem within the agency, Batiste said Friday.

On Monday, Gov. Jay Inslee announced that Washington needs an independent process to investigate and prosecute cases involving alleged police misconduct that results in death or serious harm to residents. It’s unclear whether that will be part of the State Patrol or a new state-funded agency, the governor has said.

A more immediate question is whether the State Patrol will conduct the investigation into the death of Manuel Ellis, a 33-year-old Black man who medical examiners say was killed by how Tacoma officers restrained him during a March 3 encounter.

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department was investigating his death, but Inslee ordered a new investigation after the Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney told the state that a sheriff’s deputy was on the scene when Ellis was detained and died. A state trooper also responded to a call for assistance and was at the scene briefly while Ellis was in custody and still alive, Inslee said.

An aide to Inslee said Friday that a decision had not been made about who will conduct the investigation.

Asked by a reporter about the large protests in Washington against the type of police use of force that led to Floyd’s death, Batiste said he has instructed the Rapid Deployment Force to not use tear gas for crowd dispersal because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We don’t want to be a part of spreading the COVID virus in dealing with people’s immune systems,” he said.

Rapid Deployment Force teams have deployed to assist local law enforcement with crowd control in Seattle, Olympia, and Bellevue. Teams have responded on standby to demonstrations in Tacoma, Renton, and Kirkland.

Batiste noted that there have been calls for new laws on the federal and state levels to reform law enforcement practices. He said there’s a need for standardization of policies and procedures among the nation’s roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies.

The Patrol also is working with the Washington Association of Sheriffs & Police Chiefs to determine how to work more closely with the communities they serve, “particularly underrepresented communities of color,” Batiste said.

“We want to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to not be a part of anything that is less than dignified in our interactions with them,” he said.

The state is spending $50,000 to study possible biases in the State Patrol after InvestigateWest, a nonprofit news website in Seattle, found that troopers search people of color in traffic stops at a higher rate than whites.

Washington State University researchers and the Patrol are analyzing data for any evidence of implicit bias in traffic stops and searches.

Also, the state has set aside $150,000 for a consultant’s study on how the State Patrol can have a more diverse workforce and tackle a shortage of troopers.

The percentage of people of color who work for the Patrol has increased from 12.6 percent to 14.6 percent over 10 years, said Captain Jason Ashley, the agency’s human resources director.

That breaks down to an increase in Blacks from 12.6 percent to 14.6 percent, Hispanics from 3.5 percent to 4.8 percent, and Asian and Pacific Islanders from 4.6 percent to 4.9 percent. Whites have declined from 87.4 percent to 85.4 percent of the workforce over that 10-year period, according to state data.

The percentage of Native Americans and Alaska natives has declined from 2.1 percent to 1.7 percent.

Ashley said the State Patrol is working with tribal communities to develop relationships and trust, with the expectation that will improve recruitment.

“The numbers now are less than what we would like to see in the form of diversity, not just in the ranks of troopers but through the organization as a whole,” said Batiste. “We’ve been working on this for years. We welcome people to apply to be members of this great organization and the more diverse, the better.”

This story was originally published June 13, 2020 at 5:45 AM.