Chief And Legal Team Explain Challenges Of New Laws On Everett Police Department

On Wednesday Everett Police Chief Dan Templeman along with a legal advisor to the police department spent about an hour during the Everett City Council meeting explaining the current impacts of four of the 12 laws that went into effect July 25th regarding policing in Washington State and what has changed in how Everett Police officers respond to calls for service. You can click here to see the presentation. (click the play button and then item 15 on the agenda to the right) The presentation lasts about an hour but is quite informative and includes questions and input from City Council members and also the Mayor. There are a couple of technical issues but let the video roll and it will complete.

By way of introduction here are some quotes from Chief Templeman regarding the new laws.

“As Chief of Police here in Everett I am not anti-change. I believe that my history would show that I’m a fairly progressive Chief that is open to innovation and looking at different ways to police our community and ensure that we are meeting the expectations of our community. I will also say that I align very much with a lot of the goals of the legislation particularly more de-escalation and increasing de-escalation training and abilities for officers and skills as well as decreasing the use of force in interactions like that between officers and the public.”

“The purpose of my portion of the briefing tonight is really to share with Council and the public how these laws again have led to changes in the Everett Police Department policies, procedures and our response protocols.”

“What I really want to share tonight is that these new laws have already and will change how the Everett Police Department responds to certain types of calls for service. But at the same time, we have not adopted as some police departments have throughout the State, we have not adopted a blanket no response to certain police calls for service so we are still responding to all police calls for service that come in to 9-1-1 or come in to our non-emergency line, However…that response may look a little different than it has prior to July 25th and what we do after we respond may look different as well.”

“I want to acknowledge that some of these adjustments that we’ve made at this point may frustrate some of our community members and for this I do apologize but I want to re-emphasize that we are doing our best to follow and adhere to the new State laws and I do believe that there are some members of our community that are going to have to reset their expectations when it comes to relying upon law enforcement to solve many of the issues that occur on our streets that may not necessarily be law enforcement related issues.”

The City Council may look at passing a resolution in the near future demanding the State issue an immediate clarification on the laws that have gone into effect and not wait until the deadline of next year for a decision from the State Attorney General.