Career police leader to Swank: “We should always take the high road.” | Opinion
Bart Hayes is pro-law enforcement. He retired from the Tacoma Police Department as a captain, and went on to manage the advanced training division of the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission.
That means he wants law enforcement agencies to be at their best. So he was troubled when I told him that Pierce County sheriff Keith Swank was emailing a News Tribune reporter several times a week with updates on his work schedule.
As I wrote in a column about my own opinion on the matter, the sheriff’s email updates to criminal justice reporter Peter Talbot now number around 70. Swank started sending them back in January, after Talbot asked for comment about how much time he spends on social media. The emails offer a dose of sarcasm along with details about how many hours Swank worked.
“I’ve already been sheriffing for about 4 hours today,” Swank said in one email. “Have you been working this weekend?”
That type of message, especially repeated dozens of times over three months, didn’t sit right with Hayes.
“When I see this kind of behavior, I think, first of all, it’s inappropriate,” Hayes told me. “Second of all, I wonder why, as the holder of the highest law enforcement office in Pierce County, you would waste any time at all focusing on a reporter, when you could be working harder to keep the citizens of our county safe?”
When I asked if he thought there was a risk of chilling reporting on the sheriff, Hayes didn’t hesitate.
“You say, ‘chill the reporting,’” he said. “I call it intimidation.”
Hayes is also my colleague on The News Tribune editorial board. As a community representative, he helps us vet candidates and analyze ballot measures, and he votes on our eventual endorsements. We don’t always vote the same way on the board’s decisions, and I think it’s fair to say we have different opinions on many policy issues.
But we often find things we agree on, and we both found the sheriff’s behavior concerning. Hayes offered to talk with me about the issue to give his perspective.
He emphasized that he wants Swank to succeed in running his agency. This isn’t the way to do that, Hayes said, and the sheriff would do well to change course.
Here’s a transcript of our conversation, edited for length.
Q: How would you describe this kind of behavior? You said it’s inappropriate. Is there any other way you would describe it?
A: I would say it’s inappropriate for any public official, whether elected or not, to do that. It seems somewhat juvenile to me that you don’t like something that somebody wrote, so you’re continually going to email that person 70 times.
To me as a citizen and a former law enforcement [leader] I wanted to say, why don’t you get on with your job? You have a lot of work to do. You have some great people there. Get on with leading.
Q: Can a law enforcement leader who’s acting this way harm an agency’s image or even the morale inside the agency?
A: The behavior of the leader trickles down to the people in that organization. And I don’t think constantly emailing a reporter is helpful to the sheriff’s agency. I would hope, as a constituent of the sheriff’s, that he spent as much time as possible reducing crime, increasing public safety in our county.
And I say that with all due respect to the Office of Sheriff. I have a high level of respect for the deputies out there and the people who work in the sheriff’s department. But I think that the leadership needs to be less petty about things that bother him and focus more on his community.
Q: As somebody who’s been a commander and had that experience in leadership, what would you say is the professional standard for how the head of a law enforcement department should communicate with the press, especially if the coverage is critical or frustrating?
A: Well, with all due respect, the press isn’t always right. But as a leader, you’re going to take shots from everybody, and you’ve got to let them go by you. You can’t respond to every critic, or you’re just going to be wasting your time responding to critics all the time.
I think as leaders, we should always take the high road. There are forums and venues to respond to critics. When you have criticism in the press, you speak to that criticism by your good work. You don’t attack the person who wrote an article that you disagree with.
Q: What’s the possible impact of a law enforcement leader sending this many messages to a reporter. From my perspective, there’s a feeling of retaliation. I’m wondering what you think.
A: When you have a public servant, in particular one who is a law enforcement leader, who’s persistently emailing a crime reporter, it would seem to me that the intent is to intimidate the reporter. And to me, this can have scary repercussions.
I don’t think it’s ethical, particularly for a law enforcement leader. It goes against the concept of community policing, where we welcome criticism. We welcome different outlooks, different backgrounds, different viewpoints on what we do as police. And when we don’t welcome that, when we start trying to silence our critics, then it gets very scary.
We need the community to help make the community safer. We need allies. We need critics. We’ve had a lot of changes in policing during the last 30 years of my career, and they’ve generally been for the good. And typically those changes come when the community demands it. And when you have a police leader who is sort of coloring outside the lines in the gray area by trying to intimidate a reporter, that doesn’t help our community.
Q: What would you want to say to Sheriff Swank about these emails if you had the opportunity, what and why would it be important for him to hear that?
A: I guess it’s up to him whether he thinks it’s important or not. But as a fellow law enforcement officer, I would say there’s no need to spend your time emailing a reporter when you can focus on the great agency that you have, and making it better. By responding continually the way you are, it can give people a negative view of your agency.
Q: It also stands out to me that he’s taking the time out of his day to do this while he is doing that very demanding job.
A: Well, that’s what I’m saying. You’re wasting time not only sending the email, but you’re thinking about what to send. You’re thinking about this reporter. Focus on the mission that you have. I want you to be very successful as the sheriff. I don’t think emailing a reporter that many times is the way to get there.
