(The Center Square) – Spokane City Council members are offering differing assessments of the city’s new public safety strategy, with one calling the plan a positive step while another questions whether it will bring significant changes to policing.
The Spokane Police Department’s Safer Spokane strategy focuses on reducing violent crime, gun violence and other public safety concerns through four key areas: realigning the department to address crime problems, targeting crime hotspots, disrupting group dynamics and working with community partners.
Councilmember Paul Dillon said the city needs to devote more attention to drug and mental health crises, including alternatives to people ending up incarcerated or needing treatment.
“We need more investments in infrastructure to build up the third place that is not jail or the emergency room,” Dillon told The Center Square, adding that addressing those issues will require regional and state involvement.
Dillon also pointed to domestic violence as another area needing attention. He said the city has approved grant funding for additional partnerships with the YWCA and culturally responsive organizations.
Councilmember Michael Cathcart said the Safer Spokane strategy largely reflects policing strategies the city has already used.
“I think it’s reasonably consistent with what the chief has talked about and is how he has acted in the past,” Cathcart said.
Cathcart pointed to hotspot policing as an example, saying Spokane has used the approach for years, although he believes Hall has applied a more data-driven approach.
“I really don’t think it’s that” much of a change for residents, Cathcart said.
He also raised concerns about several elements of the strategy, including its language about activating residents to serve as “their own guardians.”
Cathcart said he supports people’s ability to defend themselves, but worries the language could be interpreted as shifting responsibility for public safety away from police and onto residents.
He also questioned the strategy’s approach to minor disorder and property crimes.
The plan’s emphasis on not targeting minor disorder behaviors and graffiti concerns him, he said, because people committing those offenses could perceive a lower risk of being caught or punished.
Cathcart compared the approach to what he described as a previous Spokane police policy that resulted in less enforcement of property crimes and, in his view, contributed to increased property crime.
Policing strategies
Cathcart said he supports hotspot policing but believes neighborhood policing, including officers on foot and bicycles, would be more effective.
“Hotspot policing, again, I love hotspot policing,” Cathcart said. “It’s good, but it’s also less than what is, I think, preferable, which is neighborhood policing.”
Cathcart said a neighborhood-based approach could also improve relationships between officers and residents because officers would spend more time interacting with people in the communities they patrol.
The challenge, he said, is having enough officers to do it.
“And there really is not any political will from any side to invest in policing,” Cathcart said.
He pointed to the city’s proposed sales tax as an example, saying the revenue would not be used to hire additional police officers.
Cathcart said one change outside the Safer Spokane strategy could have a more immediate impact on how residents interact with city services: the city’s move to Spokane 311.
The city plans to begin routing non-emergency police and fire calls through Spokane 311 on Oct. 27.
Cathcart said the existing Crime Check system has generated complaints for years and described it as “a broken system.”
“I think diverting to 311 and allowing city police to take those on directly and likely more immediately, I think that in itself will probably have the greatest impact,” Cathcart said.
He said that change is not necessarily part of Chief Hall’s Safer Spokane strategic plan but could affect how residents report and receive responses to lower-level incidents.
For Dillon, the new strategy represents progress, with more work ahead.
“We are seeing improvements in gun violence prevention but one death is always one too many,” he said.
The Center Square reached out to the Spokane Police Department and the mayor’s office for comment on the strategy and the concerns raised by council members but did not receive a response before publication.