Has Seattle learned to 'care sustainably' two years after George Floyd's murder?

Two years ago this week, George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police. His death triggered protests and calls for police reform all across the nation.

But what came of those promises? And what about issues not tied to policing?

Some people say inequities that were exposed at the time — at the local, state and national level — do not stop with law enforcement.

KUOW's Angela King spoke more about this with Omari Salisbury, the founder of Converge Media, and Melissa Santos, a reporter with Axios Seattle, which officially launches Tuesday (readers can subscribe here).

KUOW did reach out to interim Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz for an interview this week. He was not available. KUOW also requested comment from the Seattle Police Officers Guild; the Guild has scheduled a follow-up interview with KUOW, which is expected to air next week.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Angela King: This anniversary comes shortly after a shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, NY. That area was a food desert before the supermarket opened. It's going to stay closed for the foreseeable future. And it's that loss to the community that speaks to a point I've heard you make time and time again: The inequities that exist today are not just about the police. What are some of the major issues still facing the Black community here that you think we've basically dropped the ball on?

Omari Salisbury: Before the murder of George Floyd, three main things that we've always talked about on Converge, specifically here to the city of Seattle: the income gap — the average Black household makes $42,500 a year, average white household $105,000 a year; when you look at homeownership — homeownership directly relates to generational wealth — homeownership has been on decline here in the city of Seattle and King County; and, of course, the gaps in our public school system.

And so I think, what George Floyd did is, of course, it galvanized people around the issue. But I think that people forget that a lot of these issues that were there before, two years later, they still remain. But unfortunately, people don't rally in the streets around economic gaps. And so, we continue to slide.

So, how do we raise the volume on those things?

Salisbury: Well, in Seattle, Black people make up 7% of the population. So, that means that the other 93% have to actually care and care sustainably. You know, people have to stay committed to it. And what we saw here is that, in Seattle like a lot of places in America, when people were very committed to to do something, something's occurred, right? But now, people have moved on. I mean, Black people, we're gonna still keep doing what we're doing here. But if people in Seattle really say that they're about change and a better state of life for Black people in this city, they need to remember the real power is with the people. The majority here have to get behind a real sustainable change for our population.

You talked about home ownership. Take the gentrification process in the Central District. That was a problem long before wealthy homeowners who honed in on the neighborhood were also getting priced out of the Seattle market.

Salisbury: The thing is the Central District — my home neighborhood, went to Garfield High School — at one point was almost 90% Black. Depending on who you talk to right now, it's maybe 10% or less Black. Seattle's legacy African American community in the Central District of Seattle, there was harm done. And the government has recognized that, the state of Washington has recognized that.

I like to say, at one point, Black people were redlined in and now we've been blackballed out. And I also want to point out as well, Seattle progressiveness don't work for Black folk. Under the leadership in City Hall and under the leadership down in Olympia, they've overseen the decline of Black people in this city over the last 30 years. And so, there's two Seattles here, probably more than that. But when people talk about how Seattle is so progressive — it probably really is for them. It's just not for us. In Seattle, we've got a lot of people who say they voted for Barack. They've got an autographed book from Michelle. But then, in their everyday practice, they move against policies that are beneficial for Black people.

We know that Black people are not a monolith, but they often vote Democratic. Are you satisfied with what you've seen from the Democratic Party, both nationally and here locally?

Salisbury: I'm not satisfied by any of them. Black people have continuously put elected officials in office here who do not deliver for our community. Definitely not letting any other party off the hook, but we can only go with what we've gone with here. I think that, for Black people, we really need to focus on our best interests. And we need to focus on economics and things that benefit us. When you have economic power, you actually get a seat at the table. When you're not impacting anything economically, it's easy for people to overlook you. Why do you think so many marginalized people and poor people in Seattle get overlooked? Because they don't bring any economic power to the discussion.

Melissa, let me bring you into the conversation. Have either of you seen much change in Seattle since Mayor Bruce Harrell and other new city leaders, like Councilmember Sara Nelson and City Attorney Ann Davison, have taken office?

Melissa Santos: I think it's really too early to say whether there's been much substantive change. But we have seen a lot more sort of talking about policing, about cracking down and doing more policing, and sweeping homeless encampments and that sort of thing. I think, if anything, there's been sort of this push for more law and order. That's almost a backlash in a way to some of the enthusiasm for police accountability reform that we saw with the George Floyd protests.

Salisbury: I don't hear anyone saying what type of police (we want), and I think that that's really important when we talk about that. Do the police officers that they're looking to hire here align with the values of our city? You know, how vested were people in the community? How vested were they in the people that they're actually policing and serving and protecting? And these are the type of discussions that I'm not necessarily hearing at this time.

Santos: Well, and one thing I kind of wonder about — I did interview the (interim) police chief (Adrian Diaz) a couple of weeks ago, and I asked about this recent finding from the Office of Inspector General that officers just completely ignored his direct orders to wear masks during Covid or were not wearing masks and following the guidance. How does that give you any confidence that when you, if you, do implement reform, if you do say this is not acceptable anymore, that will be followed? And honestly, I didn't really get a clear answer on what that means for the culture of our department. The inspector general said this seems like a huge cultural problem. And I don't think that that has been completely turned around necessarily.

Melissa, you recently wrote about a former SPD parking enforcement officer who made a racist comment to some colleagues during the 2020 racial justice protests. That officer was fired, which was something the Interim Police Chief Adrian Diaz supported, but the officer appealed the dismissal. And an arbitrator has now said that officer shouldn't have been let go.

What was the rationale behind the arbitrator's decision?

Santos: One of the things that the arbitrator said was, in the past, cases haven't been handled this way by Seattle police. In Seattle, specifically, there's some 90 open cases that just haven't been resolved. That's one way it's hard for chiefs to pass down discipline.

And it's an example of — even if it's a slightly different type of officer (parking enforcement) we're talking about here — the police chief did not feel that he was able to actually get rid of someone who he thought said something extremely racist and something that really was just not acceptable.

It wasn't a racial slur. But we're talking about this parking officer saying, "I don't understand why we can't just bring back a lynching." That was a few days after George Floyd was killed. And that was not deemed by the arbitrator to be something that was not just cause to fire the person. Because, if you did not hold officers accountable before, it's very difficult to start holding them accountable now. They can say that that's not comparable to the treatment other officers received. So yeah, that's a huge cultural issue, that if you want to make a change, in some ways these police contracts, which is what the arbitrators are interpreting, they don't let you do that easily in some cases.

Salisbury: What people don't realize as well is the Seattle (Police Department), they're looking for a chief. And if they don't hire Diaz, the contract with the Seattle Police Officer's Guild could present an issue here. I mean, it's very restrictive, even on the chief. The current contract limited the power of the Office of Inspector General and the Office of Police Accountability. You know, originally, OPA was supposed to have subpoena power and a few other things. They were supposed to have way more teeth, but that was negotiated away. And so, we actually have a very watered-down system here because it was watered down for the benefit of that contract. And so, you know, it'd be interesting, like I said, to see actually what happens here if they bring in a new chief. Because the the current ecosystem for oversight is very weak, and it's tied to that contract.

Melissa, we know you cover a lot of stories on the state level. Do you get the sense that there will still be an appetite among state lawmakers to continue looking at policing?

Santos: This might sound a little bit cynical, but I think a lot depends on the election that we have in November. Democrats are already feeling like they have to defend themselves on public safety, like they made the world less safe is the accusation they're getting just for the reforms they did do after 2020.

They banned no-knock warrants. They did stuff on the tactical side, as far as you can't use a chokehold in our state now, for instance, things like that. And also, they established some new restrictions on use of force. But they're getting told that because they did that, crime is now running rampant. That's essentially the narrative that Democrats are dealing with.

But they also already even started to roll back a little bit what they did, in some respects. That is really upsetting to some of these families that have lost people to police violence. It gets a little technical, but essentially, you can use force to chase someone who's running away even if you don't have probable cause to arrest them. That's something that some people are worried may open up the door to a lot of racial profiling again.

And if the Democrats lose seats in 2020 in our Legislature, even if they control both chambers, they're gonna get super scared about touching these laws again. I don't know that they'll be pushing forward to do things that they didn't get done before. Some of these reforms to arbitration I'm talking about: There was a bill to say we cannot let arbitrators overturn police discipline, unless there's some factual discrepancy. That was something that was proposed but did not go anywhere. I don't know that that will go anywhere, again, anytime soon.

Salisbury: You know, one thing that people don't point out is that what happened down in Olympia (after George Floyd's death) was a perfect storm. What people fail to realize is that the advocates have been down there for years. People have been in discussions for years. There's been groups that have been meeting with law enforcement agencies and everything down in Olympia for years. And what happened was, with the murder of George Floyd, because that groundwork had been done for years, the window opened for there to be movement. I think it's important that people realize that it wasn't just a flash in the pan down in Olympia. Those advocates had been down there and lobbyists working for years on some of these changes, and we saw that come to a head.

If I could just a pivot a second: I think, for me, one of one of the things that I want to see is what's gonna happen with all of these companies that were performative. I kind of have an inside joke over here: Man, I know a lot of people got hired for DEI jobs, but is a DEI position going to exist in two years or three years. Because that's impacting a larger culture, right? We see everybody like, "Oh, we support Black lives. We're into diversity and inclusion." It's going to be interesting to me to see when time will tell. What is corporate America and businesses and organizations and even city governments — was that a performative act? Or is that something that they actually believe in and is going to be sustainable?

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.