Week in Review: April 19, 2024 - with Ashley Nerbovig

Denver's STAR Program Offers Promising Alternative Response to Mental Health and Substance Use Crises from Hacks & Wonks

“Dave Reichert to Pierce County Republicans: "Marriage Is Between a Man and a Woman"” by Rich Smith from The Stranger

“Boeing whistleblowers describe ‘criminal cover-up,’ safety risks to Senate” by Dominic Gates from The Seattle Times

“Tacoma police to test gunshot-detection system. Shotspotter has faced criticism elsewhere” by Puneet Bsanti from The News Tribune

“ShotSpotter is a Failure. What’s Next?” by Hannah Cheves of the MacArthur Justice Center

“IMPD will not go ahead with gunshot detection system” by Sarah Nelson from The Indianapolis Star

Seattle Considers Controversial Surveillance Technologies with Flawed Approval Process from Hacks & Wonks

“ShotSpotter: Why waste money we don’t have on technology that doesn’t work?” by Marcus Harrison Green from The Seattle Times

“How King County’s $500-a-month guaranteed income program fared” by Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks from The Seattle Times

Guaranteed Basic Income Final Evaluation | Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County

“Guaranteed income returned to Pierce County this week. Why free money deserves a shot” by The News Tribune Editorial Board

“Seattle Police Knew Officer Who Struck and Killed Pedestrian Had “Checkered History,” But Hired Him Anyway” by Andrew Engelson from PubliCola

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[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in our episode notes.

If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I welcomed Evan Thompkins and Stephanie Van Jacobs to discuss Denver's STAR program, a promising alternative response to mental health and substance use crises, providing individuals with the support and resources they need while reducing the burden on traditional police response. With strong community support and a commitment to meeting the evolving needs of Denver residents, the STAR program is poised to continue making a positive impact on the lives of those it serves and serves as an inspiring example of what can be achieved through community-driven, collaborative solutions. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows, where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: staff writer at The Stranger covering policing, incarceration and courts, Ashley Nerbovig.

First story that we'll talk about this week is Dave Reichert, candidate for governor, making news for sharing homophobic and transphobic beliefs. What happened here?

[00:01:54] Ashley Nerbovig: Dave Reichert was chatting with a group of Pierce County Republicans in February of this year. And Dawn Land, who ran a campaign to gather signatures to repeal SB 5599 - which was a bill and later state law to expand protections for essentially homeless youth who needed reproductive, gender-affirming care - this really conservative Dawn Land asked a question about his beliefs around marriage and things like that. And Reichert's response was to say that he defines marriage as between a man and a woman, and then he goes on to talk a little bit about his beliefs about transgender people in sports. And the audience really clapped and got excited for him, which is just super interesting because Dave Reichert really paints himself as a moderate in the governor's race right now, which - these are extremely conservative views in Washington, I think 72% of people alone support gay marriage. It's so far to the right of the race and the campaign he's been running.

[00:02:53] Crystal Fincher: Well, and that's so interesting because I have heard, certainly, a number of pundits talk about Dave Reichert being a moderate. And he hasn't been running a moderate campaign. He's been running a campaign that has been reflecting the base, which continues to move further to the right. I think people get the idea that he's a moderate because he didn't really have to contend with Trump that much, wasn't made to answer for Trump during the time that he served, really. And so he kind of just stayed out of the fray. But as the Republican standard bearer, basically in the state, he is parroting what that base is parroting. We've certainly seen across the country - Republicans take extreme action to limit the rights of certainly the trans community and punish them, remove their access to care, force their outing in different environments - just really, really hostile and degrading policies to the trans community. With additional targets and action taken for the larger LGBTQ community overall - talking about banning gay marriage in some states, certainly.

This group that he was talking to - a group of Pierce County Republicans - clapped in response to what he said, both in terms of not wanting trans people to participate in sports, in addition to believing marriage is only between a man and a woman. And we've certainly seen legislation sponsored from Republicans furthering that belief and trying to codify it into law. So he, I think, realized after the fact that what he thought was going to be a conversation out of the public eye was very much in it, tried to backtrack a little bit and say - Oh, I'm not going to take any action as governor to do that - which kind of sounds similar to Donald Trump saying - Well, we should, you know, leave it up to the states. I'm not really going to do anything related to abortion. But what we have seen from people who said just that is that - okay, well, if the legislature puts something on his desk, he's going to sign it. Or there are so many tangential policies having to do with health care, insurance coverage, rights of parents and survivors that explicitly need our LGBTQ community included in that legislation as a protected class. And if I'm hearing this, certainly, I'm saying - Okay, the queer community is not safe across the board with someone talking about those views and those people cheering them on. So I'm glad we saw these statements and interested to see how this continues to play out.

[00:05:29] Ashley Nerbovig: And I think there's an example just this past session of what it would be like. One of the bills that we saw was the Strippers' Bill of Rights, which really helped to expand protections for not only dancers, but for people in Capitol Hill gay bars and gay bars all across Seattle - that allowed them to be able to have go-go dancers and people with varying states of undress be free to drink and have a good time without being scared of law enforcement coming in. And that required a governor's signature, it required a governor who was on board. I think that when Governor Inslee signed that, there was a big sigh of relief in the community. And those administrative roles that control - you just don't always see - it might not be a direct law that he sponsors or he goes out of his way. But you certainly need someone in the governor's office who's going to be willing to protect the rights when it comes through in any number of different avenues than the classic - like he might not force us to use bathrooms assigned to our sex at birth, but he could easily mess with the transgender and LGBTQ community.

[00:06:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Also want to talk about Boeing making unfortunate big news again, where a whistleblower - the one who's alive - testified about a criminal cover up at Boeing testified in front of Congress. What did he have to say?

[00:06:49] Ashley Nerbovig: He talked about quite a bit of cover-ups on the 787 Dreamliner and the 777 wide-body jets for Boeing, and he gave them a trove of documents. But the part that I was struck by the most was the fact that there were gaps at the major joints of the jets. And that he told them that he literally saw people jumping up and down, using a lot of force to try to close these gaps on the plane. Which is just so mind-blowing that you are taking this piece of machinery that's supposed to transit you through the air - already a terrifying experience - and instead of making sure that these parts of the plane connect correctly, you are just doing what you would do if you overpacked a suitcase. And like jumping up and down on it to make it connect - it was really pretty shocking. And it's been interesting tracking the number of emergency flights that have had to land because of emergencies. It's a wild - this is a really rare occurrence most years, and I'm just seeing - there's no concrete data - the number of reports of it happening is really making it kind of, not to fearmonger, obviously, but it's kind of a terrifying prospect just how lax the safety measures were.

[00:08:01] Crystal Fincher: It really is - not just the safety measures, but also the seemingly lax oversight from the FAA, the corporate capture of the FAA and basically the outsourcing of oversight back to Boeing - how Boeing wound up being responsible for being the check on themselves after two crashes. And that process was certainly a challenge to hear and understand, and looks like maybe that didn't turn out too well. He testified to basically a cover-up - not just that happening, where areas where there were not supposed to be gaps, they basically artificially created the impression that those gaps didn't exist and covered up their actions in doing so. Also alleged the cover-up of some other items, hiding or destruction of some documents. Boeing has disputed this already, but this was a pretty explosive hearing and pretty explosive testimony. And one of the things I didn't see talked about that much, but that struck me - is that Senator Blumenthal said the committee will call for further follow-up hearings, wants testimony from both the FAA, Boeing - including from CEO Dave Calhoun. And he said he wants the Department of Justice to reopen the deferred prosecution agreement that in early 2021 settled its case against Boeing. Basically, Boeing paid a settlement after those two crashes - because they were looking at criminal liability in addition to civil liability - so basically came to an agreement, a settlement that had a number of stipulations for safety measures moving forward, financial compensation, that type of thing, in lieu of criminal prosecution. And what he's saying is that the DOJ should consider the evidence gathered by the committee during the hearing and associated with it to examine whether conditions of that agreement have been violated and whether criminal prosecution is appropriate. We have the Senate talking about criminal prosecution of Boeing, and pretty widespread acknowledgement that there was cause for criminal liability previously after those two crashes resulting from basically faulty software in the deadly 737 MAX crashes.

So just really a continued crisis for Boeing that continues to shake confidence in the corporation. And it's just really a shame because this impacts our local economy - this impacts jobs here, tens of thousands of them. And to watch what really appears to - over the past decade plus, Boeing shift to prioritizing profits over the safety of planes, prioritizing profits over sound engineering practices, and seeing this is what we end up with. And I remember vividly, engineers warning early on - when they talked about moving the headquarters, changing the way they were manufacturing planes, the composite manufacturers and assembly, them saying - Hey, this is not sound, we're taking a big step backwards in terms of safety. And they were basically dismissed as disgruntled union people who just wanted more money and were sad that they weren't getting it. And here we are after two major fatal accidents, another near catastrophic accident, and continued challenges. So we'll continue to see how this plays out, but really stunning testimony there.

[00:11:31] Ashley Nerbovig: The part that I haven't - I saw an article that The Seattle Times had that was like - Boeing's cozy relationship with the FAA. But I am kind of surprised that that isn't more of a conversation - how even a cover up on Boeing's level - what do we need to be doing to be making sure that our federal aviation agency can actually step in and find when these things are happening and make sure that they have the funds to actually properly inspect and check corporate power? 'Cause after those first two crashes, even if the DOJ wasn't filing criminal charges, why did that not just heavily increase our inspections of Boeing and making sure that we actually were able to prove their claims about how safe their planes were? I'm curious because now this is just me thinking about it and talking about it, but have you seen anything on what the FAA has been doing?

[00:12:20] Crystal Fincher: Not enough is kind of the bottom line. And it seems like they increasingly change their approach to a collaboration with the airline manufacturers, which if people are doing what they're supposed to be doing - Hey, that makes sense and that works. What seems to be a question is - does the FAA have the in-house expertise to do that? Or are they truly reliant on aircraft manufacturers to provide all the information, to walk them through, and then they're just validating what they're saying? I don't know if that's the case. I certainly don't have all the answers in here - just what I've read along with everyone else - but very concerning. And I'm glad Congress is taking this seriously. Hopefully Boeing takes this more seriously than they have been, and they do more than just reshuffling the executives as they have before to have kind of a media fall guy. And we see some substantive changes in what Boeing is doing because it is shaking people's faith in aviation. Certainly, Boeing is not the only organization having challenges. American Airlines pilots just sent an open letter to American Airlines saying - We have grave concerns about the spike in maintenance incidents that have happened, seeming maintenance oversights, people who are working both in the tower for aircraft control and on the ground - taxiing the runway, doing that type of thing - being inexperienced. United is under heightened scrutiny right now because of issues they've had with maintenance. So the industry needs to take a hard look at itself. And certainly, there is a watchdog organization for the industry saying the same thing. So we'll see how this plays out. I have a couple of work trips coming up that - odds are everything goes fine, but these things do make it a little bit more unsettling than it would have been otherwise - I'll tell you that much.

[00:14:06] Ashley Nerbovig: Yeah - 100%, I agree. And also i haven't checked, but i'd be curious to see what it's doing to - how was the pricing? Was it a little bit lower and all?

[00:14:14] Crystal Fincher: No. No, it wasn't. But do want to talk about our next issue, which I was personally dismayed to read, and that is that Tacoma is going to be implementing ShotSpotter in their city. We've certainly talked about ShotSpotter before on this program, with Seattle moving forward with their pilot. What is ShotSpotter? Why is it problematic? And why is Tacoma doing this?

[00:14:41] Ashley Nerbovig: Couldn't tell you why Tacoma is doing it other than - I read the reasons that they gave, which is that they think that it will improve their response times - it's all the same stuff that people say. But what ShotSpotter is - that is the brand name for acoustic gunshots locators, basically. So what it does is you put a bunch of microphones in different places in the city. And then when the gunshot is heard, it sends an alert to 911 saying a gunshot was heard, and then cops can be dispatched to it. Tacoma is using $800,000 of a grant from the Department of Justice - which it's always so interesting to me whenever police departments talk about needing more money and stuff, just how much they can get through grants through the federal government, but that's kind of an aside. But this technology - obviously, Seattle is super interested in it, Bruce Harrell is trying to get it through the Surveillance Technologies Committee right now. And it's really - he was at a public safety forum earlier this year, and he talked about the need for ShotSpotter. And he talked about how important it was to gather accurate data about gunshots in Seattle, about how important it was to make sure that that technology was able to tell us about how many gunshots were going off, and to give cops the ability to respond to those gunshots quickly. And the thing he kept stressing was accuracy - we only know when a gunshot goes off in the city if someone calls and reports it, or if the cops hear it themselves. But this technology is notoriously unreliable. Chicago just decided to end its contract with ShotSpotter, the MacArthur Justice Committee has a huge lawsuit in Chicago over wrongful detainment and unfounded charges, especially against brown and Black people. And the idea that this technology has any basis in accuracy, is going to help us understand better the issue of gun violence in our communities - which is really serious and we should be taking seriously - but this is just a boondoggle that will cost us money, will flood 911 with calls about - even Bruce Harrell mentioned the fact that this technology could pick up breaking glass. And he kind of said it in this context of - wouldn't we be able to respond to car theft faster? And it's like - every noise in a city could be a crime, but should we be flooding 911 call centers and dispatchers with tons of information about things that could or couldn't be a crime? And the answer is no. We have a low staffing number. We shouldn't be sending cops out to random noises that we have no proof is connected to any criminal activity.

[00:17:19] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. ShotSpotter has actually proven to be a hindrance to addressing crime to an accurate police response. They cite - Hey, we're short-staffed, this is going to help us deploy more efficiently and effectively. And the cities that have deployed this have actually found the opposite. Over 88% of ShotSpotter alerts didn't result in police reporting an incident involving a gun. 86% of reports led to no crime at all. There were over 40,000 dead-end deployments - meaning 40,000 officers or responders to these calls over a period of around a year and a half, and that resulted in nothing. If you're short-staffed, can you afford to send your officers off on a wild goose chase? So it's actually baffling why law enforcement would be trying to implement this because it is actually showing that it does not distinguish effectively between different types of sounds at all. It basically hears a sound and says that's a gunshot. And the overwhelming majority of them - it didn't lead to a decrease in gun crime. It just looks like it is a waste of time. And where they're like - Well, it'll immediately sense it and send someone out. It was on average only 2.2 seconds faster than a 911 call, in a previous study.

So I believe I read that the grant they got was $800,000. Tacoma is saying this is going to be a trial - we're going to use this to conduct a trial and prove that it works. Hopefully they just want to collect data and that proves whatever it proves, and there's no stacking the deck here. But we will see how that turns out. And they say before they spend any city money on it, they're going to go through this evaluation, look at the data, and all of that. So I encourage people to stay engaged with this - there was one community meeting where they announced this recently, there will be more. Certainly there are a lot of concerns about this. And was just a little baffled to see that after the extensive bad press that ShotSpotter has received.

Also want to talk about something a little bit more optimistic - both in King County and again in Pierce County - they are implementing guaranteed basic income programs and pilots. In King County, there is a $500 a month guaranteed income pilot that ran for ten months that they are now re-upping. What happened with this and what kinds of results are they seeing?

[00:19:48] Ashley Nerbovig: Incredible results. The first story that they tell is about a woman who had gone through homelessness, and a pregnancy, and just fallen on really tough times. She was able to get housing through the King County Housing Authority and then got a job at a bank. But she came out of poverty still with a bunch of debt that needed to be paid off. And this $500 a month, she said it helped her save - it was able to help her pay for childcare, pay for gas, helped her just continue to be on the upswing as she went through - without feeling like she was going to backtrack or all of her creditors or anything was kind of breathing down her neck. And King County seems really hopeful about this and really excited about it. And a large portion of the people who are on the program are women, a large portion of the people who are on there are people of color. It just seems really excellent, and the fact that they're touting it as such a success. And they talked about - they screened this through nonprofits in the community to find people who were eligible - it was people who were below 200% of the federal poverty line, so it's going to people who need it. And they just talk about the fact that they've just seen people really rebound with just $500 - and that's so crazy to me.

[00:20:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Part of what they say is that it's knowing that there is a stability in that additional income - it's not like a one-time grant, it's not something where they have to choose between the 17 items that they've been putting off, they're able to plan more long-range to address their individual issues. Now, we've heard and certainly hear in response to this knee-jerk reactions from some people saying - Well, this is just free money and we need to make sure they're spending it on what they should be spending it on. And if we don't do that, then they're just going to waste it and this is going to happen. And that is exactly what they have found not to be the case. In fact, both in these pilots and pilots across the country, they have found that these are actually less expensive overall, than if they attached a bunch of requirements or conditions to ensure people spend money in ways that other people feel is best for them. They're saving the overhead of all of the administration to do that. One thing that I don't think people think about a lot when it comes to means testing or applying conditions to these programs - are that that just takes so much money and time to administer and skyrockets the overhead of the program.

And what they are finding with these is tremendous success. Employment among the respondents jumped from 37% to 66% by the end of the program. The average monthly income increased from $2,995 to $3,405. The percentage of households with savings increased from about a quarter to a third. Among families with children, the percentage with savings went from 0% to 42%. By the end of the program, 70% of the respondents said their quality of life was good or better, up from 56%. So these are obviously really great findings. Building on those, the Workforce Development Council is currently running two additional guaranteed basic income programs and potentially looking forward to more, so this is something that is very promising. Tacoma also trialed this before with very optimistic results. With this new trial that's starting, they're looking to collect even more data to determine if they want to do this on a more widespread basis. Tacoma's has also been funded by grants traditionally - this latest one that is just kicking off is provided from funding by the legislature. So this seems to be a more efficient way to handle our social safety net, certainly in this realm. And one of the most efficient ways we've seen to directly intervene in poverty, which just addresses so many of the chronic issues that we're dealing with in our community.

Final thing I want to talk about today is talking about the police officer who struck and killed Jaahnavi Kandula. Turns out that he had a really checkered history - and checkered is putting it really kindly - in Arizona, that SPD knew about before hiring him and moved forward with hiring him anyway. What happened here?

[00:24:11] Ashley Nerbovig: Kevin Dave was fired from the Tucson Police Department for multiple investigations into his driving, including near collisions. And then after he was fired, he was pulled over by police officers who believed he was intoxicated for another set of bad driving. And what we see here is really - the fact that Seattle Police Department knew about this driving history, hired him anyway, gave him a bonus, and then we're also talking right now about lowering our standards for who we hire - is just flooring. And it's really a shocking revelation, an incredible find by PubliCola. And I think even more embarrassing that the Seattle Police Department didn't get out ahead of this. They would have known about this this entire time, and none of that information was provided to the public. And there were multiple occasions where they really tried to paint Officer Kevin Dave as incredibly remorseful, as really someone who was just doing his job responding to this call. And while he was doing his job, he was doing it in a really unsafe manner. And I think that it's going to be really interesting to see how the civil lawsuit from Jaahnavi Kandula's family comes out after this.

[00:25:16] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I just want to read from this reporting from Andrew Engelson in PubliCola. In a police report about the alleged drunk driving incident, a Tucson police officer described a 3 am encounter with Dave - the officer in question - who came to a stop at a green light and began staring at me as if he did not know what to do before driving off at a high speed, then stopping again in an alley and abandoning the truck. The officer checked Dave's license plate and discovered the truck was under a mandatory insurance suspension, meaning it was not legal to drive - meaning this was not his first problem. Dave denied he had been driving the truck, which was still warm, saying, I loan it out sometimes. Later, he claimed he parked it in the alley temporarily so he could walk to a nearby coffee shop. According to the report, Dave complained to the officers that Tucson police were blackballing him from getting jobs in other departments because he has to disclose what happened with the department. The officer wrote that Dave appeared to be on some type of narcotic. Second officer's report of the same incident said Dave seemed nervous and fidgety, that his eyes were dilated, his speech was broken and unusual, and that Dave was not able to give me a straight answer about why his truck was in the alley. Dave then became agitated and told the officers he'd been making poor choices since he'd been fired. This happened after he was already fired for another incident. This was so egregious that the Tucson Police Department made a note to SPD just to be like - Hey, just in case you didn't see this, wanted to flag it for you because this guy is a problem.

[00:26:50] Ashley Nerbovig: Yeah.

[00:26:50] Crystal Fincher: Seemed to get a curt response from SPD like - Yeah, we're aware, we conducted our background check. Move forward - he received a $7500 signing bonus from SPD and went on to run over a college student here. Just really unfortunate. So we will continue to follow this story, but this is just so disappointing to hear. I cannot believe we're talking about lowering standards from here, when it doesn't appear we have many standards for police in Seattle when it comes to hiring. And we have a number of city councilmembers in Seattle who ran on saying - Hey, we support police, but we also support reform. Where is that? We're waiting to see what's going to be done here.

[00:27:35] Ashley Nerbovig: Where are their statements? I haven't seen anything from anyone on the city council on this - and this was pretty mind blowing of a revelation. There's no calls to get Diaz in front of them at all. How are they not demanding answers?

[00:27:50] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So we'll continue to follow this. We'll look out and update people if we do hear comment. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, April 19th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks and the wind beneath my wings is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was the staff writer at The Stranger covering policing, incarceration and the courts, Ashley Nerbovig. You can find Ashley on Twitter at @AshleyNerbovig. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks, and you can find me @finchfrii, with two i's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical shows delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at OfficialHacksAndWonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.

Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.