Washington police: Revised reform laws provide more clarity

PULLMAN — Local law enforcement say that new revisions to Washington police reform laws provide much-needed clarity to help them do their jobs.

Pullman Police Chief Gary Jenkins this week sent out a news release summarizing these revised laws and how they affect police.

For example, legislation passed last year restricted police officers from using any degree of force unless probable cause existed to arrest someone or protect someone from imminent harm.

Jenkins wrote that it also prohibited police from taking someone suffering from a mental health crisis into involuntary protective custody and transporting them to the hospital for evaluation.

Recently passed House Bill 1735 restores law enforcement’s ability to detain someone based on reasonable suspicion, and the option to take a person into mental health protective custody, Jenkins wrote.

A law passed last year prohibited police from pursuing vehicles without probable cause that a person in the vehicle had committed a violent offense, was under the influence, or was a public safety risk. Senate Bill 5919, which passed both the house and senate, lowers the standard to reasonable suspicion.

Whitman County Sheriff Brett Myers said the police reform laws passed last year were ambiguous and difficult for even those with law degrees to understand.

He said this lack of clarity created a gray area for his staff, who are responsible for deterring crime, or stopping a crime before it escalates. They often interact with people in a mental health crisis, and Myers said these laws presented hurdles that “kind of felt like a slap in the face.”

“We had to meet several times and say, ‘This is what we can still do,’ ” Myers said. “ ‘You still have a job to do.’ ”

Law enforcement officials around eastern Washington contacted lawmakers to urge them to make changes, Myers said. He said the new laws make the rules clearer for his staff.

“I think this, overall, is a win for both our community and law enforcement professionals out there every day doing their job,” he said.

David Makin, an associate professor for the Washington State University Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, said these amendments were expected but the jury is still out on how these laws affect public safety. That is why he is interested in the results of last year’s SB 5259, which establishes a statewide database that keeps track of police use of force data.

“Something that would prove important moving forward is to determine the impact of these types of bills on public safety,” Makin said in an email to the Daily News. “As we move towards the deployment of SB 5259, data will be a critical component of documenting and evaluating impact — including the impact between revisions of policy influencing practice.”

Kuipers can be reached at akuipers@dnews.com.