The Rotary Club of Kirkland held its regular weekly meeting online on August 31, 2020.
Attending were James Nevers, Dave Aubry, Darcia Tudor, Gary Cohn, Dan Bartel, Joanne Primavera, John Woodbery, Terry Cole, Rich Bergdahl, John Pruitt, Rick Ostrander, Margie Glenn, Mike Hunter, Stefan Landvogt, Don Dicks, James Meneketti, Bella Chaffey, Dave Debois, George Anderson, Brandon Honcoop, Kristin Olson, Patti Smith, and Steve Shinstrom. Let me know if I missed anyone.
President James Nevers rang the bell at 6:17 p.m.
Rick Ostrander recited the Pledge of Allegiance, while the rest of us stood, mostly mute, in order to avoid ‘out-of-sync-problems’ with our audio.
At 6:22 p.m. we had short breakout sessions to discuss how we can do some group Club activities while maintaining social distances. Our group came up with some ideas: buy food for the food bank when we are grocery shopping; buy books for John Muir Elementary; do clean-up or weeding in a City park or on the Cross Kirkland Corridor. The Club liked the idea and Patti Smith will look into a parks or CKC project we could do as a distanced group.
Joanne Primavera reported on International projects. Her committee will vote on several ideas for projects that involve working with international clubs or groups.
Dave Aubry reported that the CKC pavilion parts will be delivered to the City in October.
At 6:40 p.m. Darcia Tudor introduced our speaker, Linda Byron, former KING 5 reporter. She has worked with police departments across the country, observing both good and bad practices. She now teaches at UW-Tacoma and will speak on the meaning of ‘defunding’ the police.
Part of the problem with police field operations that she observed involved an adversarial mindset on the part of some officers, plus police departments across the nation being given essentially military gear following 9-11; this has produced more of a military mindset rather than a community-based policing point of view. Police training has often tended to emphasize a military approach rather than focusing on trying to de-escalate tense situations.
Some European countries train for a much longer period before an officer is allowed to go out alone.
Peer pressure tends to make people ‘go along’ with events rather than intervening when they should. There are problems with the disciplinary system and with officers who are fired in one place and get a job in another place, often bringing their bad habits with them. We need a better tracking system to ensure that we are not simply transferring problems from one jurisdiction to another.
We need to get police out of the business of what amounts to social services/mental health calls. More than half of calls to police involve domestic disputes that might better be handled by a trained social services person.
Ms. Byron described efforts by some jurisdictions to re-imagine community policing and social services.
There were a couple of good questions from Club members. We need more work on implicit bias in government and in police departments. ‘Defund the Police’ will result in cuts in training and not in staffing. We discussed the chaos in Seattle – reform by bumper sticker.
No meeting next week due to the Labor Day holiday.
We adjourned at 7:23 p.m.
Respectfully Submitted
David Aubry - Acting Scribe