Legislation placing restrictions on law enforcement takes effect next week
Last updated 7/13/2021 at 9:38am
RITZVILLE – Law enforcement officers will be doing business differently, with new legislation signed by Governor Inslee May 18 going into effect July 25.
Ritzville Police Chief Dave McCormick gave city council members a heads-up about the changes at their July 6 meeting.
"The new legislative updates are extremely restrictive, based on the current policies and state laws. So a lot of crimes are going to go uninvestigated," McCormick said. "A lot of the potential detentions for juveniles and adults both, they way they are handled, will be changed significantly."
McCormick said one area that would see changes in how law enforcement officers are able to respond is calls for mental-health related issues where people appear to be a danger to themselves and others. Police will no longer be able to transport someone to the hospital unless they are willing to go.
"Detaining them and transporting them now falls under a response team that is managed by Community Health out of Othello. They've hired one person, and they'll work 40 hours per week. So if there's a crisis, now we call them and they send somebody up here; an hour and a half, two hours away," McCormick said, adding that person cannot detain someone, either. "They will assess the situation, and then they'll call a Mental Health Professional who can. So it could be four or five hours before anybody gets here to do a detention. But the police can't detain them and take them to the hospital anymore like we used to, to get them protected and the community protected."
McCormick said the new legislation calls for a crisis response team to be called rather than police.
"In theory, that's great. In Spokane they have crisis response officers who ride with police officers. They get a call, that unit goes out and the response person interacts with the person who needs help. And there are five different locations where they can pick them up and transport them to and drop them off, without detaining them," McCormick said. "But we don't have that here. They say, 'Well, you can bring them to Spokane and drop them off,' but that's not practical for us here in Ritzville."
McCormick said the legislation includes "a ton of un-funded mandates," including many hours of training.
McCormick said he has been working with a representative of Lexipol to incorporate the changes into the police department's policy manual. Lexipol is a private company that provides policy manuals, training bulletins and consulting services to law enforcement agencies and other public safety departments.
"We will not be taking applications and begin the hire process (for a fifth officer) until that manual is in place," McCormick said.
Another way police response is hindered by the new legislation is the ability to pursue a suspect.
"The most serious felonies are the only ones you can pursue now," McCormick said. "We're still going to do what we can, it just isn't going to be what people are used to. It's going to take the public a while to understand our limitations, and I think they aren't going to like them. If someone calls and says, they stole our car and the bad guy is driving off in it, we want the police to go after them. But we can't."
McCormick said he understands the need for change, but the pendulum has swung too far.
"There are some bad things that happened in the last couple years, and law enforcement officers were the cause of that, and I believe that's what brought it on nationwide, not just in Adams County. We are not going to be able to take police action on a variety of topics that we have been in the past. Our ability is going to be extremely limited," McCormick said. "Things will change; it will just take a while for society to not accept what the legislature has done, and push it back. The public and the victims of crime will be less concerned about how the police do their job, and be more concerned with police being able to do their job."
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