“These past few weeks continue to be very challenging for all of us.
As a society we have much work yet to do to address racism and inequities.
As a city we’ve been making progress — but we also have more work to do to strengthen our actions to address institutional racism and ensure our policies embrace inclusion and equity.
The events of recent weeks have brought police departments across the country under heightened scrutiny. I’ve been receiving many inquiries about our policies and practices.
I’d like to assure you that (Police) Chief (Dan) Templeman and I have zero tolerance for unnecessary force, abuse of power or racially-motivated aggression by any city employee and more specifically, by our Everett Police officers.
Now more than ever, I’m truly grateful for Chief Templeman’s leadership and the entire department for their commitment to serving ALL of our residents with compassion and integrity.
The EPD works hard to build and maintain public trust, which is earned through fair and impartial policing, transparency, accountability and community partnerships. We have a strong commitment to ensuring our team provides superior service to all members of our community.
I’d like to highlight some of the ways we strive to achieve that goal:
1. We start with recruitment. Officers must be thoroughly vetted to ensure they do not have a history with abuse, racism, xenophobia, homophobia/transphobia,
or discrimination. Pre-employment screening includes, but is not limited to,
background checks, polygraph exams, psychological examination, physical/medical examination, credit history, driver’s license history, criminal history, drug screening.
2. We place a high value on training. Everett police officers are among the most highly trained in the state. This includes:
• Officers collectively received more than 33,000 hours of training in 2019
• Every officer has received 40-hours of Crisis Intervention Team/De-escalation training, well in excess of the state mandated 8-hour requirement
• Everett officers receiving regular training on biased-based policing, implicit bias, use of force, procedural justice and the duty to render first aid
• Scenario-based training that includes regular qualifications on our firearm simulator, where we test our officers’ decision making ability through a series of force/no-force scenarios
3. Our police team cultivates connections in our community to build understanding and trust in ways beyond mere law enforcement
• Youth and school outreach programs to develop relationships between young people and local officers and build resiliency in youth
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• Neighborhood policing programs
• Community education and engagement to provide crime prevention tips and build relationships (Neighborhood meetings, National Night Out, etc)
• Embedded social workers who work to address homelessness, addiction, mental illness and crime through outreach and enforcement.
To address some of the questions we’ve received regarding our policies on use of force:
• It is the policy of the Everett Police Department that officers shall use only the amount and duration of force that is necessary to perform an urgent lawful duty.
• The use of any kind of neck hold is prohibited except in extreme situations of self-defense or defense of others.
(…) Our city teams are finalizing a robust FAQ that more thoroughly addresses these and many other policy issues, which will be able to (be found) on the City of Everett website.
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The Chief and I are actively reaching out to communities of color to listen, hear their experience and ask for their recommendations.
I look forward to working with the Council, our City teams and our community to continue the work we’ve started these past few years to address inequities and racism in our city.”
