Police violence: Focus on top-down accountability

Re: “Tacoma puts 5th officer in Ellis case on leave,” (TNT, 1/2).

As a former business owner, I learned by experience to resist the temptation to blame individual employees for their mistakes or bad judgment. All too often, these errors were a result of poor training or poor leadership (or both).

It seems that the relentless spotlight shined on individual police officers via cell phone videos focuses on the end result, not the root cause.

Instead, we should turn our attention to those ultimately responsible for police policy, procedures and training – our mayors and city councils, followed closely by police chiefs. These are the CEOs and boards of directors for our cities.

Instead of simply condemning the actions of public safety rank and file, we should shift the focus to those in charge of how the rank and file are instructed and trained to do their jobs – the policy and decision-makers at the top.

This story was originally published January 5, 2021 at 10:10 AM with the headline "Police violence: Focus on top-down accountability."