Legislative District 29

Public safety means different things to different people, but everyone deserves to feel a sense of safety and belonging in their communities. But we know for too long that low-income communities and communities of color have had barriers in place preventing them from feeling like they belong in our communities. One way to measure progress toward this goal is to be in community, to understand the diversity of perspectives. We can also measure success by the decrease in use of force used by the police. We need to begin by reducing the amount of negative, and violent interactions with police before we can seriously begin creating safe and equitable communities.

We need to increase transparency and accountability in our police force. Just as with any other government agency, our effectiveness is tied to the perspectives and experience of those we serve. We wouldn’t tolerate the lack of accountability from any other institution except for the police. As a State legislator I will continue the work of bringing equity to state and local government systems, building on my success of creating the Office of Equity.

One reform that I would love to explore is the idea of standardizing the process of civilian review of police use of force investigations. These civilian review boards needs to have the power to subpoena and investigate this allegations without influence from the police department. Currently in Washington no such civilian review board exists that is this independent of the police department. If the police are as committed as they say they are to transparency and accountability they should support this effort.