SPOKANE, Wash. — Spokane's new police chief is wrapping up his second week on the job.
On Friday, the police chief did his first official interview with KREM 2 News.
Full transcript of KREM 2 News interview with Spokane Police Chief Kevin Hall can be found below:
Shannon Moudy
So you are nearing two weeks on the job. Now, not quite two weeks. What's your impression of Spokane? I know you're actually familiar with Spokane outside of the job, but what's your impression of the city and the police department here? So you are nearing two weeks on the job. Now, not quite two weeks. What's your impression of Spokane? I know you're actually familiar with Spokane outside of the job, but what's your impression of the city and the police department here?
Chief Kevin Hall
I continue to be impressed and sort of confirmation bias, but it validates everything that I learned before I came here, some of the things, the impressions I already had because I have visited here many times, I am just enormously impressed with the city, with city government, and I am particularly impressed with the community and the agency. It's a very professional agency, you know, and [as] I've said before, there's obviously been some hiccups in the past with this agency, but I think they've turned it around and are on a very good trajectory.
Shannon Moudy
How does this compare size wise, and the police force, the department size with Tucson?
Chief Kevin Hall
Tucson is definitely bigger. You know, the population in Tucson is about two times, a little more than two times bigger than Spokane, and the agency is as well. So I think we're authorized about 880 in Tucson, and here it's about 351 and that's sworn staff that doesn't include professional staff.
Shannon Moudy
So with the police department, as you're kind of familiarizing yourself, what do you see that could change, or where could this department go under your leadership?
Chief Kevin Hall
That's an excellent question. It's going to be a collaboration between the community, the department and where they want to go. You know, I've always said, we police at the will of the community. Our legitimacy comes from the community, so the expectations that the community has of the police department. Sometimes they're a little we have to level those expectations, and a lot of that just comes from they don't understand a lot of the criminal justice system. Police are just one part of a criminal justice system. So I think we can go in a lot of different directions. One of the things that I believe deeply in, and kind of call them cornerstones, is constitutional policing, community centered policing and evidence based policing. And I think bringing a greater degree of knowledge about evidence based policing into this community and this agency is going to push this agency forward in a very positive way.
Shannon Moudy
I can gather what collaborative policing is. Can you kind of elaborate on the other two points that you made that constitutional...?
Chief Kevin Hall
Constitutional policing means that we police in a manner that respects the Constitution and People's Rights in a respectful, courteous manner. So, for instance, stop and frisk very controversial back in the late, you know, 2018 2019 on the East Coast that, in my mind, would not, at least in the manner it evolved to back in, I'll just say it New York City that was no longer constitutional policing that very well may have started out that way, but then it went in a different direction. That's an example of where we need to be conscious of how we're doing things and what the legal justification is to do those things, everything from when somebody opens the door, what's our legal justification to step through that door if we're conducting an investigation? What I like the officers to think about is, what's my legal justification to reach into these pockets or this backpack? And many, many times they have that justification, but just that, that second to think about it might stop somebody from doing something that they shouldn't be doing. That's constitutional policing, evidence based policing simply means that you're creating Policy, Programs and protocol that's based on the best available research and science at that time. So when we're crafting, say, for instance, crime reduction strategies, we're looking to academia and science to help us build those strategies in the most effective and efficient manner using data.
Shannon Moudy
So I want to, and I know that last question was very broad, and I know you've said before you're not looking to come in and just make sweeping changes right off the bat, especially just to make change. So Correct? I want to talk about some of the main issues that are impacting Spokane, and as I know you have said before, not unique to Spokane. That's our unsheltered, unhoused population as one, how can the police department kind of step in, address or collaborate with other city leaders providers to address that issue.
Chief Kevin Hall
Well, I think you hit the nail on the head there. It's all about collaboration, and a lot of people don't like to hear this, but the police department cannot fix this problem on their own. Arresting people is not going to fix this problem, and a lot of people don't like to hear that. But I'm going to go back to what I said earlier. Policing is just one small part of the criminal justice system. Once we arrest them, we have to, we have to book them, and if there's not enough room in the jail, we can't book them. If it's not a bookable offense and we write them a ticket, then that's what we have to do. We have to write them a ticket. Still counts as an arrest, but they still sit on the street corner with a ticket. And then there's prosecutorial discretion. Just like police officers have discretion, prosecutors have discretion. It's up to them on who they prosecute and who they don't. It's the same with judges of the judiciary. They have judicial discretion. It's up to the judges on who they hold in jail and who they don't, or who gets released and who doesn't. We have little to no control over any of those things. But constantly I'm being asked, why don't you just arrest them and put them in jail, as if that would solve the problem, when we really have no control over that. So based on those sort of global realities, we have to start thinking about other ways to try and address the problem, and the other ways to address this problem, which I've said before, and I'll say again, is a public health problem. The public safety part is a piece of that, but overall, it's a public health problem. We need to engage with city leadership, with nonprofits, with treatment providers, with housing providers, to look at this holistically. It's a very complex system, social problem, and it's going to take a complex system, systematic solution, and that's going to require a lot of different partners in sort of a collective impact, sort of model.
Shannon Moudy
Back to you talking about evidence based policing, and this idea that you can just arrest jail people who are unhoused, is there anything in that research or evidence that you've seen that talks about the impact of that? I mean, sounds like you're saying that wouldn't even work.
Chief Kevin Hall
It's so enormously expensive and cost prohibitive. Something else, I don't think a lot of people think about, we could build a jail twice the size. It will probably get filled up, and then we're going to be in the same issue [of] incapacitation of people, in my opinion, [it] will work. They can't commit more crimes if they're in jail, but you're going to need a lot more jails to do that. And is the community going to support that? And is the police department going to support that? It's it's an interesting question, but there, there are some things in the literature, in scholarship, that that you can do, and a lot of that surrounds environment, you know, if you, if you look at certain areas and say, Why are they here and not two blocks away or over there? Sometimes it is police presence. Sometimes it's because this area over here is activated. There are people there. There are folks walking the streets, you know, enjoying that area which kind of pushes people who don't want that kind of attention are homeless folks, people who are using open air, drug use, that type of thing. They'll go. They'll go other places. Some places just are almost anchors for unsheltered homeless folks, but also criminal behavior. The viaducts, those very covered private places, are an issue from an environmental criminology standpoint. They're a huge issue. The same with, you know, certain parts of the downtown area that I've seen lately. You know, when I'm there and I get out of the car and I'm looking around and I'm trying to figure out, why are they here and not two blocks away? What is it about this spot right here, that is such an attraction to this population, and how can we change that? So what I guess, what I'm saying is, there's always going to be multiple solutions. If there was one single solution, somebody would have figured [it] out. But it's going to take a lot. There will be times when arrest is absolutely appropriate. There are going to be times when treatment is appropriate. There are going to be times when getting somebody into housing is appropriate, and sometimes just getting them out of the area will be appropriate. And then if you can activate that area so they don't come back, then that's a bonus.
Shannon Moudy
Yeah, and that kind of goes into my next thought about getting people into an area, getting people back into downtown, specifically, I know that's been kind of an area where we have this divisive debate about property crime and the unhoused. Not in any way to say those always go hand in hand, but business owners that are concerned. I know that you have heard from concerned business owners already, and there are a couple ordinances in Spokane that are on the table dealing with a lot of these issues. People are concerned that if these ordinances pass, SPD won't be able to enforce or do anything about potential vandalism or loitering camping. What's your response to that? How do you feel about these ordinances as they stand right now?
Chief Kevin Hall
I'm not sure which ordinances you're talking about, but like the camping ordinance, which is already on the books, that is being enforced. People don't think it is, but that's a citation enforcement. We give people a ticket for that, the jail is not going to accept them. We're not going to take them to jail and book them on that. And as I said before, and you know, I'm sure you've, you've heard from the sheriff on this the jail is at capacity. Sometimes, Spokane officers will wait two, three, I think, even four hours, literally, as someone exits the jail, then they can put the person they have in custody into the jail. So that's 345 hours that the officers off the street just sitting in the parking lot behind this building waiting to put them in jail. So I think those are tools. The ordinances are tools. But I don't think they're working in the way people imagined that they would work. And it goes back to that incapacitation conversation. I think they just think we were going to put these people in jail, and that's where they're going to be, and that's going to be the end of the problem, when, in fact, we can't put them in jail. They get a ticket and even if we could put them in jail, the jail's already full. So it's an intractable sort of problem, and that's why I go back to we have to figure out other solutions. I understand the frustration of the business owners, and nobody likes to walk down the street and see open air drug use or urination or defecation, and certainly not when you're with your family, and those are shared public spaces, and folks who are unsheltered have no more right to those spaces than the people who are trying to conduct business or their customers or clientele. So we have to figure out other solutions to fix this problem.
Shannon Moudy
The ordinances I'm talking about, actually, they've been deferred for city council vote. I think you were at the public forum or the press conference where they talked about, at least one of them, that would make being unhoused a protected class. And it sounds like there's a lot of people who are afraid that that would kind of give a free pass to people to vandalize or loiter. I don't know if you want to respond to that.
Chief Kevin Hall
That's not the way I read the ordinance, but I can certainly see where there's confusion over that, and perhaps better messaging and framing of that particular ordinance would help, but I don't see anything in that ordinance that would impact the enforcement of laws or ordinances that are already on the books.
Shannon Moudy
Thinking about the business owners who are upset and concerned versus how the department would or is handling our unhoused population. How can the department kind of balance the needs and rights of all of these people who are at different ends of the spectrum and sometimes at odds with one another? How can the department fairly keep people safe and protect the rights of the unhoused population?
Chief Kevin Hall
That's the golden question, right? How do we do that? And that's where I go back to what we talked about earlier. And we need collaboration. We need the behavioral health system involved in this. We need the substance use treatment of facilities involved in this. We need the housing authority and housing nonprofits involved in this, because it's a multifaceted problem, and it's going to take a multifaceted approach to fix this. So if we can engage somebody into substance use treatment, we just need to know where to take them. You know, is there an open bed if it's in treatment or or is there a mat clinic that's open, a medicated, assisted treatment client clinic that's open, it's usually a very small window of opportunity when somebody's ready to engage in treatment. The same with behavioral health, when, if somebody's in crisis, and we need to take them somewhere, where's that bed? And is it voluntary, or is it involuntary? And is it within? Statute, or is without if it's voluntary, and they're in crisis, and we take them somewhere, and then they just run off, have we really solved the problem? So I guess what I'm saying is all of these components make it very complex, and all of these components mean we need all of those different people at the table to help us figure this out. But just enforcement, in and of itself, is not a feasible option. It is one tool and an appropriate tool in many, in many instances. But we can't arrest all of these folks, and in some cases, that's even going to exacerbate whatever medical, emotional, psychological issue that they're suffering.
Shannon Moudy
On the flip side, anything you're doing to kind of alleviate the fears of business owners, or anything that can be done to make them feel like I don't have to move my business out of the area because I keep getting broken into, or rocks thrown through the window, or people hanging outside that I don't necessarily want out in front of my business all day.
Chief Kevin Hall
So those, those are very common and robust conversations, and in the 10 days I've been here, we've had multiple conversations at city leadership about those, multiple conversations within the police department about what we can do, what we can do constitutionally, what we can do within the paradigms of the ordinances that we have and the state statutes. And a lot of this goes down to perception. You know, when you talk to the business owners, those, you know, those small amounts of property damage, or, you know, those petty thefts, that's one thing. What I'm mostly hearing is I just don't get any customers because they're afraid to come here. So I can deal with that other stuff. It's the fact that my customers don't feel safe so they don't come here. So what we need to do to sort of alleviate that is start building this trust base. And how we do that is what the discussions around, is it visibility? Is it having more officers downtown? Is it having more officers in certain areas of downtown and at what times? And is it, you know, how we pay for that is a whole other issue. The budget is an issue and how much overtime I'm spending on putting officers down there, because if I take them away from their normal duties when they're on duty, then I'm taking them away from calls for service, and people are calling 911, and they're not getting a cop because the cops downtown. So those are the sort of balances that we have to think about at the leadership level. But the reality is we have to make people feel safe. And I would submit that as just as important as actual crime reduction is the perception of safety.
Shannon Moudy
So it sounds like, and I know you're still very new on the job, so you're not going to be able to come in here and make all these changes implemented right away, but it sounds like the how to do this, and the action steps are still kind of in the planning and discussion stage.
Chief Kevin Hall
Yes, absolutely. And like I said, other folks within the city have come up with some pretty good ideas, you know, with code enforcement and sanitation and street medicine and just dealing with some of the urban blight, the graffiti, the lighting issues, like I said, the viaducts are an issue. And so there are a lot of different strategies we can employ, hopefully, all together, we can do that and start to get some traction on this problem.
Shannon Moudy
And I did hear you mention behavioral and mental health, as I understand, is one of the passion points for you.
Chief Kevin Hall
Yes, it's no secret, I think any officer, will tell you that they engage in people who are in crisis or are suffering from a behavioral health issue all day long, every day it's an issue. And, you know, I'll go, you know, I just read, and I have no affiliation with this hospital that, you know, the only crisis stabilization center for teenagers or for youth is on the verge of closing. And you know, that's a shame, because it's hard enough trying to treat young people or get them treatment. And many providers won't treat young people simply because of the developmental issues. But if we have that resource now and that resource is going away, then that's just one less option my officers have in dealing with folks who are in crisis.
Shannon Moudy
So I know that you were part of some initiatives and programs with Tucson PD and dealing with behavioral and mental health and crisis response, anything that you learned there, or any program you were part of that could be or should be implemented in Spokane.
Chief Kevin Hall
Sure. Sure, and Spokane is doing some of this, both the Spokane Fire and Spokane police and other folks in the treatment environment. So I think maybe building on some of those, the CO response models, where it's a clinician and a paramedic or a clinician and an officer who's responding to calls, where there's an obvious behavioral health Nexus, as well as proactively addressing, you know, folks out on the street in the downtown area who may be, you know, exhibiting, you know, a level of psychosis or or just acting irrationally, to engage with with those folks, to try and get them into treatment or to stabilize. You can field stabilize. You can stabilize folks over the phone. I don't know what the partnership looks like with 988, at a local level, but I intend to dig into that and and, you know, at some point, one of the things that I found a lot of success with was putting a crisis clinician in the 911 center and doing field or phone stabilization, we found that to be extraordinarily beneficial, and I'd like to explore that here. So all of these touch points were, it's either a police officer, it's a call taker at the 911 center. It's, you know, civilian crisis workers out on the street, street medicine workers, those are all points where, if we have a robust behavioral health system that can take in these folks or address these folks and stabilize then I think once again, we can gain some traction on this problem.
Shannon Moudy
You're talking about the police department being kind of part of this system of providers that are dealing with people in crisis. And I know that, not even just here, but nationwide, we've heard that police should not even be part of crisis response. It should be medical behavioral health experts or providers. What's your take on that? Should police be part of behavioral and crisis response?
Chief Kevin Hall
I think it's an issue of availability and practicality. After 5pm or 6pm there is nobody else to take care of these folks when they're in crisis, it's the police. So we have to the other part, and this, this frequently gets missed in these discussions is 911, callers. When the call taker takes that call, they're not always articulate or clear about what exactly is happening. And for example, you can get a call sounds like a family fight. You can hear things breaking in the background. People are saying, I need police. I need police. It'll come out as a domestic disturbance. You're not going to send a crisis clinician to that, but when the officers get there, they find out it's family members holding down another family member who's in crisis. So it actually is a mental health call. It's trying to clean up the data coming in with a 911, call to what it actually occurs. And that's difficult, because you're dealing with people, we did a study about four years ago where we were able to look at what the call is classified when it goes out as dispatch, and what the officer what the disposition is at the end of the call. And there is a 50% discrepancy between those two things. 50% of the time, what was classified going in is different than what it was closed as. So that shows how much of a gap we need to breach in order to accurately determine what is a crisis or behavioral health call and what isn't.
Shannon Moudy
Do you think there's any opportunity or any need for maybe some training here at SPD on how to deal with those situations, because it sounds like there's always going to be the situation where this gets called out as one thing, and you get there and it is a behavioral or a mental health crisis. Is there an opportunity there to train officers on here's how you handle situations that are fluid when you figure out when you get there. This is not what I thought.
Chief Kevin Hall
And Spokane has already done a lot of this training, and it's a very robust program here, and that's crisis intervention training, 40 hour course, basic mental health first aid is another eight hour course that I'm not sure if Spokane is doing that, but that's also available. But the CIT course here is very robust. The vast majority of the patrol officers, if not all, have been through it and and that helps them identify and deal with people who are in crisis, are suffering from a behavioral health issue, is there always room for more training and improving? Absolutely, I don't think I'll ever say, yep, we're good. We're not going to do any more training in this area. Things evolve and change, and you have to be able to be flexible and adapt to those things, including, what? What the. Ecosystem looks like regionally for behavioral health and criminal justice. All that being said, there's a lot of different models out there. Some are working in other areas that may or may not work here, and I'm more than willing to explore those, including, you know, civilian crisis responders that I believe there are some here now, but that respond in a parallel dispatch form. So if you have the ability in the 911 system to make that determination, and these folks are available, they go instead, as opposed to cops. And in fact, the call never even shows up on the screen for the police officers, it goes to those crisis clinicians that works in many communities around the country. And then if you pair that with a co responder, either with a paramedic or a police officer, with a crisis clinician, and if it's a it's a tweener, we call it, and can't really tell, then they go instead and make a determination, is this a criminal justice call, or is this a behavioral health call?
Shannon Moudy
So that's something you're looking to explore here, potentially?
Chief Kevin Hall
Yes.
Shannon Moudy
Kind of goes along with what we've been talking about as of your swearing in date, according to mapping police violence, Spokane ranked number two for its size, per capita, for people killed by law enforcement. What can be done? Or are you doing anything to address that in particular?
Chief Kevin Hall
Yeah, I'll start out with I'm not familiar with any of the incidents that have occurred in the past 12 months, and I know there's a lot of concern around that, so I can't really make any comment regarding those individual incidents. I can say in a broad scope, there is a movement in law enforcement to try and reduce deadly use of force, and most of that is focused on non lethal or non firearm related instances. There's about roughly 1,000 officer involved shooting deaths or deadly force incidents in the country, roughly about 600 these are really generic rough numbers. About 600 or 60% involve firearms, guns. Roughly 40% or 400 involve other, other things other than guns, bats, knives, machetes, axes, hockey sticks, whatever it is, I would carve out the ones that involve firearms. That's a whole different dynamic, and focus entirely on this non firearm related dynamic, and that's where I believe things like ICAT, which is a national de escalation protocol, can actually impact the numbers of who police officers engage with and use deadly force on, and it involves a lot of de escalation, including distance. So if you're not worried about a firearm and they have a knife, you can back up and you can engage from a far greater distance. It gives the officers greater time to react to anything that the offender or the individual is doing, distance, cover and time and so slowing things down. A lot of times, we think things need to happen really fast, when, in fact, they don't need to really happen really fast, particularly if you can contain the individual. Nobody else is in danger, the public's not in danger, then you can slow things down and take as much time as you need to sort of deescalate the situation or stabilize the individual to a point where you can have a rational conversation with them. So there are things like that that we can certainly look at, and I intend on looking at, we can look at training, both the basic academy training, as well as the training they get after they come out of the academy. There's always, always going to be improvements made. I'm a believer in lifelong learning and constant improvement. And that can, that can certainly be applied to policing, and should be applied to policing. And then I these are all systems, and this is one big, complex system, and I would even go so far at the very beginning is take a really deep look at who are you recruiting and why. So who is your target audience and who are you recruiting? Are we recruiting people with pro social behavior, or are we recruiting people who maybe perhaps don't exhibit some of those behaviors that you want. And I'm not saying Spokane or any other agency is doing that. I'm just saying that's something that we could consider, and sometimes we don't always look really carefully or target really carefully the folks that we want to bring into police. Maybe that could change that dynamic as well.
Shannon Moudy
My last question with the Tucson Police Department, you were part of the show the first 48 I don't even know when, but that's a show that gives people kind of a really up close look at Homicide squads across the country. What did you learn from your participation in that show, and what can you take from it in dealing with the media and kind of the transparency of policing?
Chief Kevin Hall
And that's it, exactly. I'll be completely candid, I was not a fan of that. I didn't have a choice. I was a sergeant of the homicide squad at the time. I thought it was a distraction in some very high profile, very sensitive cases, but I did learn that people are very interested in what police officers do. They're very invested in how police officers work, and so there was value in that, and I think it did show the department and my detectives in a very positive light. So I did appreciate that, but I didn't know if it was worth the distraction of having to it was almost always two camera crews that were following you around all the time. But what I did learn is the media is not the enemy. The media is just looking for information, and that's an extension of what the community wants. The community just wants to know what their police department is doing, what kind of work they're doing, and giving them that kind of insight that they don't normally get. There's value in that.
Shannon Moudy
So can the public expect that you'll be open and as transparent as you can be, because we know that you can't be an open book about everything.
Chief Kevin Hall
Absolutely and right before I came into this meeting, I was meeting with our legal advisor, and going through some of the statutes in Washington that are a little different than the statutes in Arizona, and some of the things we were able to reveal very quickly in Arizona, we just can't here in Washington. So I think there's going to be a bit of an education on my part, and then my responsibility to educate the community on why sometimes I can't, by law, release some things and try and navigate those waters.