“IF NOT NOW WHEN?”
There is no question getting to the truth in Spokane is difficult but anyone who follows Police Oversight should have known full well that when Mayor Woodward and the City Council tried to sell the current Guild Contract to the public by intimating that the OPO and the OPOC were all in favor of the contract and contributed to the negotiation process, that it was just Hogwash, for lack of a better term.
As any reporter suspecting something was not right would do I submitted a Public Records Request on February 19, 2021, in an effort to get to the truth, and as is normally the case with the Woodward administration even though I submitted the request almost a year ago the City of Spokane response is still incomplete and likely will be for some time to come.
I did receive one installment from my PRR which primarily contained some innocuous email interaction with just a few exceptions and some of the emails between myself and the OPO where the OPO tried to give the impression that as far as the Guild Contract was concerned he wanted to publicly portray the OPO involvement as a glass half-full. The first installment also included some interesting emails from CP Beggs.
I’m not sure what CP Beggs meant by “broad systematic change” but from the standpoint of change in the ability of the OPO to articulate to the public in a closing report what the OPO believes should have happened or not happened was changed to the extent that the OPO can’t say anything without the Guild approving what he says, and if they don’t like it can go after his job.
Given the Council Presidents public statements regarding OPO “Closing Reports” I find it odd that as a member of the City Council he approved the muzzling language in the 2017-2021 Guild Contract.
“While he stopped short of advocating City Council voting it down, Logue remains concerned that people who want independent investigations into police conduct and public release of “closing reports” that summarize his findings “probably won’t be satisfied” by the tentative agreement unveiled this week.”
“This agreement gets us there now, in my opinion,” Beggs said earlier this month.
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/feb/22/details-of-tentative-agreement-between-spokane-cit/
So what the heck happened, the muzzling language remained and not one CC Member complained, Mayor Woodward touted the contract as one of her accomplishments and CP Beggs seemed to go along with the Mayor.
With the new Guild Contract for beyond 2021 in the process of being negotiated OPO Logue’s Sunday, June 7, 2020, to the Mayor and City Council pretty well demonstrates what the OPO’s real position was prior to the approval of the 2017-2021 Guild Contract. The email below is of course a Public Record that Mayor Woodward and the City Council never wanted the public to see.
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:e5c6e247-0a3c-3a71-907f-2bf94b21af50
People should be asking today both Mayor Woodward and the City Council the same question the OPO asked in 2020.
IF NOT NOW WHEN?
Part Three of Muzzling a Marine will cover several other things the Public should know but have been deprived of.
Story Images:
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:1db9c66c-965f-3ecb-9c3e-8ee2579843b1
Buffalo Brian Breen 