-Hello. I’m your host, Brian Callanan.
A new law could help a statewide police hiring crisis
by allowing DACA recipients, known as Dreamers,
to become law-enforcement officers.
[ Siren wailing ]
The SPD is having serious recruitment
and retention issues --
a problem seen in police departments across the country.
-Recruiting is a big issue in just about every community.
-To encourage more candidates to become cops,
Washington state has just passed a measure
allowing immigrants with DACA status
to apply for these and other civil-service jobs.
-They want to serve in communities.
They want to protect their communities.
They want to be out there involved.
-So it is a win for DACA recipients.
But even more, it is a win for our local economy
and the city of Seattle.
-Advocates say these so-called Dreamers,
who came here with their families as children,
are part of a local immigrant community
that already puts billions of dollars into local tax coffers.
-Immigrants are contributing significantly.
-With the new law, city officials say,
DACA recipients can serve in critical roles,
tackling public-safety issues that can often involve
immigrants and communities of color.
-And they can talk directly to that community,
have the cultural competency to understand
what the community needs are.
-Lawmakers say with more than 14,000 DACA recipients
in our state,
Senate, Bill 6157 has the potential
to change the culture of policing
in more ways than one.
-And it’s gonna change what people see
with respect to law enforcement.
It’s gonna be a law-enforcement agency
that will look like the community that they are serving.
[ Protesters chanting ]
-Can Dreamers help end a nightmare
of recruiting for police and other agencies?
-The question is, are DACA recipients
part of the community?
And I think there’s a general agreement
that the fact is they are.
-People don’t feel comfortable
approaching an officer to report a crime.
-We have to be able to figure out ways that,
you know, we’re able to bridge this gap.
-That’s next on "City Inside Out."
[ Mid-tempo music plays ]
♪♪
And joining us to discuss this topic a little bit more,
we have with us Steve Strachan, former King County Sheriff
and head of WASPC,
the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.
Steve, good to see you again. -Good to see you.
-We also have with us Blanche Barajas.
She is a City Council member
from Pasco in Central Washington.
She’s played a big role
in this effort to hire on Dreamers
as police officers and civil servants.
Council Member Barajas,
thank you very much for making the trip over.
-Thank you. Absolutely. -And, also, we have with us
Chief Adrian Diaz of the Seattle Police Department,
who I know is very eager to talk about hiring more officers.
Chief, good to see you, too. -Thank you for having me.
-Let’s jump right into this. And Council Member Barajas,
I know a few other states have this program
to hire DACA recipients as law-enforcement officers --
California, Colorado, Illinois.
But it sounds like you really helped
get the ball rolling here in Washington State
the idea which became Senate Bill 6157.
Where did this idea come from?
Why have you been pushing for this?
-This idea came from actually police officers
in the city of Pasco.
So it was initiated by a conversation
with some of the officers as they mentor,
you know, around the city. -Mm-hmm.
-So it was really their involvement in the community,
mentoring, being part of, you know, the community policing
that we really, truly believe in.
And I was approached by one of the officers in particular,
letting me know his friend had just retired
from the Army National Guard. -Okay.
-He intended to become a police officer.
He went through all the steps. He applied.
He scored really well. But in the background check,
it came back that he was not eligible due to his status.
And so that started the conversation.
And who do I need to talk to to get a certain phrasing
or a sentence in that RCW to change?
-Yeah. The state law there. Yeah.
-Correct. To allow for DACA recipients to participate.
In the research that I started,
it was currently two states that were allowing DACA
to be police officers.
And then in the years as I did all this research
and talking to people to make the connection,
it gradually grew.
And up until last year,
there are seven states that now allowed
DACA to be police officers. -Yeah.
And it sounds like you talked to
this guy right over here, Steve.
And I wanted to talk about this WASPC, your group.
It’s made up of city, county, state, federal,
and tribal law-enforcement,
a lot of different agencies.
How did you become convinced this proposal
to hire DACA recipients was a good idea?
Are rank-and-file officers on board with this?
What can you tell us? -That’s a great question.
And Council Member Barajas approached me,
asked to have coffee with me.
And, really, all this in many ways
started from that meeting for coffee,
where she presented this idea, you know,
in terms of what she just said,
in terms of feedback from her community.
And it reminded me, you know, going back
to when I went through the police academy
and they talked about Sir Robert Peel,
who was sort of the father of modern policing
from the London Metropolitan Police.
And Robert Peel said,
"The police are the people and people are the police."
It speaks to the fact that the police
are not a force that comes in to occupy,
but rather they’re of the community.
And that’s another way of saying, you know,
this topic that we’re talking about
is about how do we better serve the community and include people
who are a part of the community?
The question is, are DACA recipients
part of the community?
And I think there’s a general agreement
that the fact is they are. -Yeah.
-So how do we fix this
almost another unintended consequence of the limbo
that so many live in... -That legal limbo, yeah.
-...in terms of immigration?
And so the conversation we had, the council member and I,
I said, "Well, we need to build stakeholder support."
I asked her to speak to some of her local elected officials,
including the Sheriff of Franklin County,
where Pasco is located.
She came back, and she said, "I’ve spoken to them.
We have strong support, bipartisan. Let’s move forward."
And frankly, it’s been a great bill to work on.
It’s been bipartisan.
You know, there’s been a few questions here and there.
-Which we’ll bring up. -Answer those.
But we’ve worked it through. It’s gonna be signed,
I think, by the Governor next week.
-Yeah. -And it’s a great example
of building stakeholder participation
as a way to support our community,
and most importantly I think expand the pool --
not water down the pool, but expand the pool
for recruiting law-enforcement officers.
That’s a huge need for us right now.
-It is, it is.
And we’ll definitely dive into that, too.
Chief Diaz, maybe we can start bringing up this idea.
It was reported a few weeks ago.
The SPD is dealing with the lowest amount
of sworn officers you’ve had since the 1990s.
Recruiting and retaining officers
has been very difficult.
I know you know that well. -Yes.
-How do you foresee a tool like Senate Bill 6157?
How is that going to help
with officer hiring, officer recruiting?
Some thoughts about this.
-Yeah. It opens up the pool of applicants.
Honestly, we have members of the community.
We’re one of the largest, you know,
populations in the country that are --
-In terms of DACA recipients. Yeah.
-In terms of DACA recipients. And this is really important
that we actually have members of our community that serve --
some speak the language, understand the community,
you know, have gone to the schools in the city.
And this is really just a great opportunity for us
to really bridge out our community policing
and our relational policing philosophy.
-Yeah. I’m very much looking forward
to seeing how this would work,
so let’s get into how it would work.
And, Steve, maybe I can start with you here.
As I understand this, as this goes through,
this program would have applicants with DACA status.
They’d be getting more preference points
when they apply for these civil-service jobs.
Can you break down some of the details here?
-So let me be clear.
And, so, they don’t receive preference points per se.
But what it does change -- the state law 6157 changes --
It allows for DACA recipients to apply for
and to be hired as law-enforcement officers.
-Okay. -Which presently is not in law.
it is not allowed. So it changes that.
And then it also works to resolve the issues
with the possession of a firearm.
-Yes. -There’s federal prohibitions
for people who are not either legal,
lawful permanent residents or citizens.
And so it works to resolve that issue.
In addition, the bill goes beyond that
to provide additional preference points for certain things,
such as a college degree,
experience with something like AmeriCorps,
or some of those really valuable past experiences.
-Peace Corps type stuff. Yeah. -And then bilingualism,
which may include DACA recipients.
It’s one of the many reasons it’s important for us
to have that hiring pool available to us.
But it’s two separate things,
both of which I think are gonna serve law enforcement well
to expand that qualified applicant pool.
-Yeah. -It’s one of the reasons
that’s such a good bill and such a positive bill.
-Let’s talk about that expansion.
Chief Diaz, maybe I can jump back to you.
I talked a little bit with Seattle’s Office
of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.
They say our state may have as many as 18,000 DACA recipients,
with a third to half of them in Seattle and King Counties.
So I’m talking about 6,000 to 9,000 people
potentially for you to consider.
I guess I’m just trying to figure out how do you envision
making this DACA hiring effort part of your overall
recruiting and hiring efforts here in Seattle?
-Yeah, right now our team is actually putting together
a very specific messaging with the radio,
with anything with our Spanish media.
We lost Univision as a community.
-Yeah. -However, there’s many of them
are actually going into social media
type of media news information.
So we want to hit those outlets
to be able to really drive home that we’re hiring
and, also, work with the schools.
And I’m talking not just the -- you know,
you’re not talking about high school,
but, you know, right now in this city,
we have the ability to have people or have students
that are now going to community colleges
as part of that next year’s program that we have.
But this actually opens up the applicant.
Okay, what job are you looking for?
You might have been going to engineering.
You might have gone to psychology.
You might have gone to a variety of different other fields.
-Seattle Promise program. Yeah.
-Seattle Promise. -Exactly. Yeah.
-But why don’t you think about the police department?
You don’t want to sit behind a desk.
We actually allow you to actually be out
and in the fresh air, interacting,
serving your community, helping others.
And this is the job to do it. -Yeah.
-I’m interested to see how that plays out.
And maybe, Council Member Barajas,
I can go back to you here,
because it’s definitely gonna take more
than news releases and radio ads and all that.
I’m thinking about outreach into different communities
in different cities.
How do you set that up to make it successful?
What would that look like in Pasco, for example?
-So, Chief Adrian mentioned a little bit
about the outreach into schools.
A lot of our officers are highly involved
in schools and presentations and job fairs.
And so taking advantage of those interactions,
taking the advantage of maybe a national night out,
where you’re interacting with kids
as young as 10 years old and kids that are saying,
"Oh, when I grow up, I want to be just like you."
And, you know, plant that seed to where they desire,
and as they’re growing and learning
and seeing an officer in their neighborhood,
and it’s normal, a friendly person.
-Who looks like them. Yeah. -Right.
A friendly person that they can identify with.
You know, take advantage of that opportunity
and just keep growing that relationship,
that partnership with the parents, with the schools --
you mentioned it -- with colleges, alternative education,
all of that. -Yeah.
Chief, can I jump back to you on this?
Because I think there’s a bigger issue here
of building trust with the police department.
I know you talk about that a lot in general.
But building that trust with our immigrant communities --
I think that can be an issue sometimes.
Sometimes immigrants in those communities
do not trust the police.
Maybe they ran away from the police in their home countries
just to come to the U.S.
Can you talk about that?
'Cause I think that can be
a challenging issue for law enforcement.
-Yeah. I mean, back in 2001, the city actually passed,
you know, a bill that would allow us,
or as an ordinance to not ask for immigration status.
So we’ve really tried to push that home,
that we want to work with the community.
We want to build those relationships.
This is the next iteration.
Now we can actually hire from our community
people, kids that literally have grown up here
since -- you know, I’ve seen as young as 1 or 2 years old
that now are 20, 21 years old
that are now potential applicants
to the police department.
They wouldn’t even know what Mexico looked like.
-Yeah. -And now they’re like,
"This is my opportunity to actually be able
to provide for my family."
And not just a job, but a civil-service job
that allows you to have a pension
and allows you to have, you know,
other opportunities that you might not have.
And so I think for us,
it’s really making sure that the families
in our communities know that this is a huge opportunity
to communities that might not have had those other things,
when we talk about pension and medical
and all these other different -- -Any sort of work opportunity.
-Any work opportunities. -Yeah.
-But really, I think, you know, when you look at civil service
and we look at policing and ability
to be able to serve your community,
we know, at least from when I grew up,
we had a lot of Latinos join the military
because that was their path to citizenship.
It was their path to being able to have other job opportunities.
And this should be that, also, that same path.
-You’ve been talking about this on the national level,
it sounds like, yeah, yeah. -Exactly.
And so, at the national level,
I’ve been really pushing that, you know,
after so many years, you should have that path to citizenship.
Military has done it for so many years.
In fact, every single July Fourth,
I go down to the citizenship swearing-in ceremony
down at Seattle Center. -Right.
-You have 400 or 500 people that are going in.
Many of them are military,
because they’re serving their country,
and then they have that path to citizenship.
This is that opportunity. -Yeah. Thank you.
And, Chief, I want to stick with you
'cause I want to talk about some of the larger challenges
involved with police hiring.
City Council, I know,
has been recently pushing you to speed up the process,
get officers hired more quickly.
You know this. I know this, too.
As positive as this DACA program I know could be,
I want to talk about some of the pragmatic details.
And I’m definitely pulling open a can of worms here.
Are you concerned that having this new hiring process
for DACA recipients could put another layer
of bureaucracy and slow things down?
I just wanted to make sure I brought that up.
-Actually, no. Many of DACA recipients
have been here for years, decades.
And for us, it’s about ability to do a background check.
You know, typically, we look at 10 years of work history,
many of the people that are 21, 22 were in school,
and they have very little, you know, work history,
but they have the heart and soul
to really try to make sure that they serve their community.
And so that’s what we’re doing, our background check,
We’re trying to make sure that we’ve done our due diligence.
But there’s also a process just to become a DACA recipient.
There’s a background process.
-They’ve gone through some paperwork for sure, yeah.
-So it’s not that this is, like, you know, we’re hiring people
that we can’t do any information checks on it.
They’ve already done a check. So there --
-Council member, please.
-Part of the -- I wouldn’t say research,
but part of the conversations that I had as I was looking into
what it took to change this, the DACA kids
are one of the most scrutinized groups of people,
as they have to apply every two years.
Nothing can be on their record.
Not even a speeding ticket can be on their record
to be eligible for the next...
-Yeah. To get renewed. Yeah. -...application. Correct.
-So I agree with what you’re saying,
but this pool of people,
these kids are very well following the law,
because they don’t want anything to affect
any potential pathway to citizenship.
-That is a great point. There’s another legal question
I want to tackle with you, Steve.
This came up during the process as Senate Bill 6157
was going through hearings.
So, the federal process does not grant
DACA recipients status as legal residents of this country.
So generally, federal law would say
they should not have guns or ammunition.
And this is where I’ve seen a lot of passionate responses
on social media -- take those for what you will --
people saying, "These aren’t legal residents.
Why are they getting guns?", Things like that.
This new bill from the state
I think has some answers to that.
Can you break this down, please? -It does.
And you referred to the fact that this does get --
you know, it’s part of the immigration debate,
which is very intense, and it’s sometimes very divisive.
It can become very partisan.
The issue of DACA recipients
is a unique group of individuals,
even though there’s 14,000 to 18,000 in our state.
There’s a lot.
But they’ve been provided with special status
through an executive action.
They are highly scrutinized, as the council member mentioned.
It’s absolutely true. And many --
I mean, they came here as children, generally speaking.
That’s the status of DACA recipients.
So to your question, it’s this interplay
between federal requirements in terms of firearms.
A non-citizen cannot have a firearm
unless they are a lawful, permanent resident,
which does not apply to DACA recipients.
So how do we resolve that?
Other states worked to resolve that
in their laws before ours.
And this was where we see sort of
the cooperation of the sheriffs and chiefs,
Chief Diaz and others, come together,
and some of the things that Chief Diaz does.
There was some question about how do we properly provide
the legal way that a person can carry a firearm
as a police officer if they’re hired under this law?
During the time that this was under consideration
by the Washington State Legislature,
Chief Diaz actually sent to us a document that he had received,
and through his contacts
and his network from the Department of Justice,
that specifically clarified how that can be done
under federal law -- existing federal law.
-Right. -So as long as the agency,
if they choose to hire a DACA recipient,
specifically creates a policy
that says, "You carry a firearm as part of your job,"
that then is allowed under federal law
per the Department of Justice.
So we’ve really gotten a lot more clarity than we had before.
So the what-ifs out there include
that if Chief Diaz chooses to hire DACA recipients
and they come on board, could a future president
revoke that executive action? -Yeah.
-The answer is yes. -Okay.
-You also have to deal with the background-check issues,
which, again, most DACA recipients
have lived here for most of their lives.
So there are some what-ifs, and there are some risks in there.
There’s some risks to potentially losing people
that we’ve invested in over time.
And the question is, is the risk worth it,
and is that connection with the community worth it?
And I think most chiefs and sheriffs believe it is.
-Yeah. Well, let me keep going down that path.
And I think this is something maybe Council Member Barajas,
I can bring you in here.
So, DACA has been around since 2012.
September last year, there was a federal judge in Texas
that ruled twice that DACA was illegal.
And so, just this point that Steve made --
I mean, these DACA recipients didn’t lose any protections.
They can still renew, the current ones,
but no new applications are being taken here.
I guess I just wanted to ask that question.
Are you concerned for the future of Dreamers
in our country and the future of this program,
could it all change
with the presidential election this November?
-You know, that’s always a risk.
And every year, when they’re reapplying
for their status, that’s a risk.
And everyone is always fearful
of what’s this president gonna do?
-Yeah. -So what can we do about that?
We really can’t do anything.
It’s just keep encouraging kids to continue applying,
continue staying on point with everything that they’re doing.
-Well, and let me jump in,
'cause I hear what you’re saying,
and I almost feel like 6157 could be --
I mean, it’s a very hot topic, of course,
immigration in our country, and has been for decades.
But is this a type of program
that can help bring down the temperature on that
in terms of our national conversation?
Some thoughts about that? -I think it will.
It’ll definitely educate around what DACA is
around the individuals that are DACA recipients.
You know, again, not asking for a handout.
It's just breaking down barriers
and giving them the opportunity for a career
that they really want to be involved in,
and just breaking those barriers
to where they can be involved
and give back to the communities that they grew up in.
-Yeah. -It’s part of that.
As far as can it change in the future?
Definitely it can change.
It’s a fear that they always have.
However, if I’m not mistaken --
and you can probably add to this --
there’s the last sentence in the bill.
It doesn’t affect them moving forward.
-I see. Okay, okay.
Well, it’ll be interesting to see
how that plays out legally.
Please, yeah. -I was just gonna say
that there’s a political element to this.
Of course there is.
And there’s a presidential election this fall.
If you look at this, this is about public safety
and reaching out to the community
with a group of people who have a very specific status
and have had it for 12 years through three administrations
from two different parties, that’s a fact.
And if this helps build public safety
and provide an avenue for individuals,
no matter who the president is,
I think the argument is they’re serving our communities.
This is something that everyone should recognize.
I mean, everyone understands the strong opinions
about the border -- it’s a public safety crisis.
It’s a humanitarian crisis. Those are all still there.
But regardless of who the president is,
I think that if we can start to come together
with these kind of solutions, no matter who that person is,
it provides a pathway for individuals
who are trying to live their lives and serve their community.
-Chief, did you have a thought?
-Yeah, we’ve had non-citizens serve our country
in the military for -- since the test of time.
And so, you know,
they’ve actually been able to carry firearms,
they’ve been able to serve in wars.
And so, the police department is no different.
You know, the whole firearm issue.
We’ve already done it for the military.
What we’re really trying to focus on
is actually potentially creating national legislation
because more states are jumping on board.
And it is not a bipartisan divide on this.
Many of the states -- Virginia was just this last one
that now the bill is on the governor’s desk
that literally are now trying to move forward on this.
And I think what, for me, is really important
that it doesn’t become a presidential, you know,
conflict that whoever becomes the president
then says, you know, "I’m not going to get rid of it."
If we can actually put it in national legislation,
help out all of our communities
that are across the country that need people to serve
and honorably serve our departments
and serve our communities,
and then also create a path to citizenship.
-Yeah. -I mean, this is a good way
for starting that comprehensive immigration discussion.
But for us, for our community’s sakes,
that literally the police departments are short staffed,
this is that opportunity for us
to be able to really engage.
And we’ve done it for the military,
for the police departments.
-This is that next step. -Steve.
-And then just to be clear,
this had bipartisan authorship sponsorship
in the Senate, included Senator Torres
from Tri-Cities, who’s a Republican.
It had Democrat sponsors as well.
And it passed overwhelmingly in both the House
and the Senate with bipartisan votes.
So this is not about Partizan politics.
This is about how do we come together.
-Yes. Fair.
Chief, I wanted to jump back to you
because unfortunately, over the past couple of months,
we have seen a few different immigrant families,
first generation, second generation,
be affected by gun violence in our region.
I’m thinking specifically back to the case of Mohammed Adam.
I’m from the West Seattle area. It happened there.
The 15-year-old boy of East African heritage
shot and killed in West Seattle back in January.
I just have another big picture question here.
Do you think a program like this,
hiring dreamers as officers,
hopefully making an impact on public safety,
could help out these sometimes
very vulnerable immigrant families?
-It’s essential. I mean, you know,
we put in people that have had formerly incarcerated
to help out reduce gun violence
because they can talk with youth that are,
you know, experiencing troubled times.
But having, you know, people from our community
that speak the languages, understand the culture,
that is also the next step of us
really integrating into our communities in a different way.
And so, yes, this is -- I’m talking about East Africans.
I’m talking about, you know, Latinos, Latinas.
Like, we have to be able to figure out ways that,
you know, we’re able to bridge this gap.
And I think this is that path,
at least for the dreamers, to start with.
-Thank you. Steven,
I wanted to make sure I brought this up.
Senator John Lovick, the prime sponsor for Senate Bill 6157,
a longtime law enforcement officer himself,
told me he saw this bill as a way
to change the culture of policing.
I know you’ve heard that term many times in your years.
Is this the kind of measure that can actually make that happen?
-Well, it’s one of many things that I think we’re all doing
together in terms of making more --
making stronger the culture of policing
and its relationship with the community.
As the chief is talking about
these relationships with the community,
I was a longtime chief and sheriff myself
before I came to this position, and I remember as a chief,
I was invited by an immigrant's group to come in
and speak with persons who were undocumented
to make very clear in uniform, as the chief,
that we were not going to ask about status,
that we wanted to know if they were victims of crime
and to serve them.
And I remember walking into that room,
even though they’d been told I was coming,
and feeling the anxiety and feeling the tension
and the, you know, just how, frankly, scared so many were.
And it helped me to sort of get into that place.
And then once we started talking and interacting
and communicating, it was amazing
the change that you could see,
including with us and with our officers.
-Yeah, I was going to say. -This is all part of that.
And it, again, it’s not about politics.
It’s about how do we better serve our community.
And if a person is victimized, how do they feel comfortable
and trusting of their law enforcement agency?
This is one of many things that we can and should do.
-Councilmember. -And I’ll add
to what you’re saying, Director.
That’s the primary reason why I was involved,
not only because an officer brought the situation to me
to explain about someone who wanted to apply,
but really, as we’re in the community,
especially in the Tri-Cities of predominantly Latino --
a very diverse community --
but predominantly Latino community,
you go back to that.
People don’t feel comfortable
approaching an officer to report a crime,
to report that they’re being victims.
So how can you get to that?
You’re talking about bridging gaps,
breaking down barriers -- this is it.
This is the way, putting one of their own within their community
that they know,
a face that they recognize and feel comfortable
and come in and report that.
-Yeah. Thank you. We need to wrap up here.
And Councilmember Barajas, maybe I can start with you.
When are we going to see a DACA recipient
as an officer in the state of Washington?
What’s that going to mean to you?
I need the 30 second version, if you can.
-Give me a date when you’re going to sign the bill,
and I will make sure I have a line...
-It’s not me. It’s going to be the governor.
But yes. Okay, okay.
-But as soon as possible. -Okay. Alright.
Chief, maybe talking about this a little more.
You’ve been advocating this, I know, on a national level.
Board president of the Police Executive Research Forum,
which talks about this a lot on the U.S. level here.
What do you envision in terms of seeing DACA recipients
move through the pipeline?
What’s that going to mean for our city and our country?
-I think it creates more diversity in our department,
but nationally, it actually allows us
to integrate more into our communities
and build that trust, and I think nationally,
it allows us to --
If we could push national legislation
and create a path to citizenship,
it really actually integrates all of our communities
back into as one community. -Alright.
Thank you very much for that. Steve, some final thoughts
on when you see this program rolling out
and what overall impact
you’re hoping it has. -Well, I do expect
it to be signed next week by the governor.
I want to thank Councilmember Barajas
for getting this started.
We’re 51st in the nation in staffing.
[ Clears throat ] Last in the nation.
That needs to change.
We need to increase staffing.
There’s political agreement on that in our state
in terms of increasing law enforcement staffing.
This, I think, will be part of it.
And the last thing I’ll say is,
if you’re watching this and you are a DACA recipient,
if you know a DACA recipient, be aware of this.
And what do you do if they’re interested in public service,
firefighting, law enforcement,
call your local law enforcement agency.
Most are hiring, and we need you.
-Okay. Thank you all for this. And we will be right back.
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Thank you for that input.
Thank you for your input as well,
and we will see you next time on "City Inside/Out".
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