Cops killed our loved ones. Pierce County Sheriff’s defense of hogtying is wrong | Opinion

“Hogtying,” which means to bind someone’s hands and feet together so that they cannot move or even breathe freely, is widely recognized to be inhumane and dangerous. Its very name signals that it is brutal and dehumanizing. Across the country, people have successfully sued police departments for harm suffered while hog-tied. Yet, the Pierce County Sheriff Office and others such as the Lakewood Police Department continue to train, use and defend hogtying.

While these regressive departments hold the line on the frontier days of policing, the rest of the state is moving forward. As a result of legislation passed in 2021, the Attorney General’s Office wrote a model policy on the use of force, which represents the bare minimum needed to keep officers from exceeding their authority. No surprise, hogtying is not a permitted tactic.

Laws that establish statewide limits on police tactics serve the critical purpose of reducing violence by police. For example, in 2021, the passage of HB 1054, banned chokeholds and lateral vascular neck restraints, restricted vehicular pursuits, limited the use of tear gas and banned military equipment. Without laws and policies that specifically define when and how physical force can be used, police continue to harm and kill people using unnecessary or excessive force.

We sometimes talk about “police culture,” meaning the values, ethics, characteristics and the bonds that provide solidarity among police. Police culture is a problem across the state, but Pierce County stands out.

To put it bluntly, there is a legitimacy issue at the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office. Legitimacy is the framework that provides authority for policing, and without legitimacy, police cannot earn community trust. Elected Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer has not provided the quality policing that all Washingtonians deserve, and this undermines his legitimacy.

The Pierce County Council itself chartered a review of the use of force by the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office. That review shows that deputies use force against people of color, against Native Americans, and against Black youth in particular at rates greatly disproportionate to the population.

And what has the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office done in response? Nothing, except defend practices like hogtying. The residents of Pierce County deserve better.

It is important for the public to know that the Criminal Justice Training Commission does not and will not provide training on hogtying. That means a local agency like Pierce County or Lakewood has to provide training on its own time and dime. What a waste of taxpayer resources. Surely, these departments have higher priority needs.

Based on our own experiences with policing and the loss of our loved ones, it is obvious that some tactics need to be taken off the table entirely to keep people safe and alive. While Pierce County’s use-of-force report doesn’t detail whether the incidents reviewed involved people in crisis, we know from other sources that people with serious mental health issues are 10 times more likely to have force used against them than those without. If the new state model policy on the use of force had been in place sooner, perhaps young men like Manny Ellis and Leonard Thomas, both killed in Pierce County with Pierce County Sheriff’s Deputies present, would be alive today.

As members of the Washington Coalition of Police Accountability, we continue to push for laws that reduce police violence. For example, we support HB 1513, which would end police stops for nonmoving violations. It’s a law that could have kept Iosia Falatogo alive in north Seattle and Giovonn Joseph McDade in Kent.

While the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office and Lakewood waste time and resources on hogtying, we invite police and community focused on public safety to join us in advocating for changes like HB 1513 that will reduce injuries and deaths from police violence.

Po Leapai lives in Tacoma, is a member of the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability, and serves on the Office of Independent Investigations Advisory Board. Po’s cousin, Iosia Faletogo, was killed by Seattle Police in December 2018.

Fred Thomas lives in Pierce County, is a member of the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability, and is the co-chair of the Office of Independent Investigations Advisory Board. Fred’s son, Leonard Thomas, was killed by a Swat Team in Fife in 2010.

This story was originally published February 18, 2023 at 5:00 AM.