Talk is cheap. Pierce County must fix sheriff’s department use-of-force disparities

Of all the red flags raised by a recently released report into the Pierce County Sheriff’s department — which, among other troubling findings, revealed that local deputies use force against Black people at more than five times the rate they do against white people — one spoke the loudest:

The lack of surprise.

In so many ways, it was a study that confirmed what we already knew to be true.

The overdue question that matters now to local leaders: What are we going to do about it?

Produced by a criminal justice task force made up of staff from the Pierce County Executive’s office, the Sheriff’s Department, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Public Defender’s Office, the study looked at more than 3,000 uses of force between 2016 and 2020. Broadly, it found that Black residents, based on percentage of the population, were far more likely to experience police use of force than white residents. The same goes for Native Americans. As KNKX reporter Mayowa Aina noted, “the largest disproportionality in the new study shows Black children — youths under the age of 18 — experience force 7 to 13 times more than their white peers.”

That’s sobering and alarming, but is it surprising? Of course not. The findings are similar to what a News Tribune analysis found for the Tacoma Police Department earlier this year, and in line with a report from the same criminal justice task force last year, which concluded that Black Pierce County residents are disproportionately arrested.

It also echoes the lived experience many Black Pierce County residents have been describing since time immemorial.

“Again, it’s here on paper, staring us in the face with great statistical analysis behind it,” Pierce County Prosecutor Mary Robnett observed of the study, acknowledging her own lack of surprise. ”I think it’s data that we all have to pay attention to.”

Robnett is exactly right, but her words also hint at the problem.

The data is important, but parsing it is purely academic unless transparent and effective efforts to fix the disparities follow. We can study these problems all we want; law enforcement transformation will require much more.

Sadly, at least in Pierce County, it’s fair to wonder if that’s a challenge our local leaders are up for.

As Pierce County’s elected sheriff, Ed Troyer would be the most obvious person to turn to. But given his recent track record of doing more harm than good — and particularly the misdemeanor charges and calls for resignation he faces related to his treatment of a Black newspaper delivery person — that’s an opportunity that feels remote at best. It was hardly shocking on Monday to see the Washington Black Lives Matter Alliance respond to the use-of-force study by calling on the Department of Justice to step in and investigate.

Short of DOJ intervention, and absent competent leadership at the sheriff’s department, the task of making inroads of police reform would seem to fall on the Pierce County Council and County Executive Bruce Dammeier. The Council has attempted to make recent strides, including proposing the creation of an independent ombudsman office with the power to investigate the sheriff’s department. That would be a sensible start, but it also underscores the council’s limited authority in the matter.

Then, of course, there’s Dammeier, who has repeatedly said that addressing racial disparities in policing at the Pierce County Sheriff’s office is a top priority. It’s why he created the criminal justice work group that produced the recently released report.

Describing the study as “a milestone in our justice reform,” Dammeier — who will soon enter his sixth year in office — pledged that the County “cannot and will not ignore it.”

“We have a lot of work to do ahead of us,” Dammeier said.

That’s true, but they’re also words we’ve heard before. As the use-of-force study makes abundantly clear, the time for talk is over.

Unfortunately, the longer it takes those in positions of power to address the problem, the harder it is to believe they’re capable of it.