WSLCB - Board Caucus
(September 17, 2024) - Enforcement Training Speaker Cancellation

2024-09-17 - WSLCB - Board Caucus - Enforcement Training Speaker Cancellation - Takeaways
[ Event Details ]

Remarks to Enforcement staff by an ex-cop convicted of manslaughter were cancelled, but questions remained about planning and why it was leaked to the press before WSLCB leaders heard about it.

Here are some observations from the Tuesday September 17th Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) Board Caucus.

My top 4 takeaways:

  • Agency officials chose to cancel a speaker for an in-service training for Enforcement Officers when it came to light they would be hosting a former Minnesota police officer convicted of shooting and killing a suspect.
    • As a limited-authority law enforcement agency, WSLCB Enforcement Officers are required to complete annual in-service training as outlined in WAC 139-05-300. Provided training meets standards set by the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission (WSCJTC), section (1)(d) allows the employing agency to develop in-service training curriculum provided they submit a Declaration of Compliance form.
    • WSLCB staff had scheduled a September 23rd Enforcement and Education in-service training in Vancouver including a presentation from Kim Potter. In 2021, Potter—a White woman—was a Brooklyn Center, Minnesota police field training officer who drew and discharged her firearm during a traffic stop, killing Daunte Wright, an unarmed Black man. Potter was convicted of first- and second-degree manslaughter and served 16 months in prison before being released in April 2023.
    • On September 16th, WSLCB released a statement explaining a “training proposal referred to a ‘high-profile case from Minnesota where a police officer was charged and convicted of Manslaughter.’ While not mentioned in the training proposal, the ‘high profile case’ was to include Ms. Potter…Once Chair Postman and Director Lukela became aware of Ms. Potter’s involvement, they directed staff to immediately cancel the training.” The statement concluded that agency leaders “believe learning can come from those who have made tragic mistakes. The cancellation of the planned training is not a reflection of its value. Instead, LCB leadership believes the inclusion of Ms. Potter would be insensitive and inappropriate to Mr. Wright’s family and the African American community who continue to grieve.”
    • Following the cancellation of Potter’s remarks, the situation became a news story, being picked up by local outlets including King5 and the Seattle Times, and other media including MSN, the Minnesota Star-Tribune, and the New York Times.
  • Board Chair David Postman explained the situation, and board members pointed questions to Director Will Lukela and Enforcement and Education Director Chandra Wax about how the training had gone under the radar at the agency before being brought to media attention.
    • Postman began by recognizing the cancellation of the training, saying that Wax and Lukela were there to address the events that led to Potter being invited to address their officers, while also asking them to “tell us where we're at today? Is there something more happening?” (audio - 1m, video - WSLCB, video - TVW)
    • Lukela acknowledged Potter’s cancellation and said, “internally, we're looking at all the speakers, presenters who may be presenting to any agency staff, regardless of division, and putting together a process which…is going to include the vetting of all of those potential speakers and presenters.” He promised to “reach out to the board once we make final determinations on the vetting process” (audio - 1m, video - WSLCB, video - TVW).
    • Board Member Ollie Garrett appreciated the forward-looking process, but wanted clarity: “how did we get here…with such a controversial speaker on the agenda for the enforcement training…how did that even take place?” (audio - 1m, video - WSLCB, video - TVW)
    • Board Member Jim Vollendroff was also troubled, asking, “how is it that we learned about this from the Seattle Times, and what process have we put into place to make sure [we’re hearing] things internally and having discussions before hearing about it from [the] media?” (audio - 1m, video - WSLCB, video - TVW).
    • Postman invited Wax to go over the process for picking and inviting speakers to in-service training (audio - 4m, video - WSLCB, video - TVW).
      • She explained that in June 2023, “one of our enforcement captains recommended a use of force speaker that he observed” at a Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC) training conference that May, Imran Ali, who spoke in a session on “Current Trends in Use of Force & Liability.”
      • Wax elaborated that in July and August 2023 agency representatives had “reviewed the speaker's website, did an internet search, heard about the presentation that he had conducted at WASPC” and talked to Ali directly before hiring him to attend their September 2023 in-service training. He spoke to WSLCB Enforcement staff about “use of force, law changes, trends, case studies and reviews specific to duty-to-intervene, and some of the changes that had happened in the law that year.”
      • Following those remarks, staff extended an invitation to Ali to speak again in 2024 “to present updated materials,” Wax stated, “especially considering that we're taking a look at our less than lethal use of force tools.” WSLCB contracted with Ali on February 5th, and a draft agenda was sent to agency personnel in August which included Potter. Wax described the expectation that the training would cover “current use of force laws, trends, case studies, outcomes, and hearing from an officer who made use of force decisions that ended tragically. The decision to host this training was made from the perspective that it would resonate with officers to hear from someone who had made a life altering error in the course of their duties to understand the consequences of their decisions and prevent this from happening at our agency.”
        • WASPC Executive Director Steve Strachan offered a defense of Ali and Potter’s educational value in a Linkedin post on September 14th. He credited the Seattle Times story for moving past a “gotcha” media narrative around the training: “because the journalist seeks out the whole story, it’s more of an indictment of the environment in our state of the fear of politicians using law enforcement as a political football and our outrage culture.” Strachan framed Ali as an “excellent trainer” at previous WASPC conferences who “presents very effectively about what we can learn from these types of incidents to help ensure they never happen again,” which Strachan termed “an incredibly worthy goal.” He went on to quote Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison—who prosecuted Potter—as stating “if we want to make sure there’s not another Daunte Wright, we’ve got to learn from what happened.”
      • Wax indicated that there was a three-person Enforcement and Education training team and the “staff member that oversees the team [wa]s a 37 year state employee with 27 years at the LCB” who had “an understanding of the unique role of limited enforcement officers.” This group was “charged with, and trusted to provide a training program that meets state standards and equips our officers to do their job and make split second decisions,” Wax told board members. She also noted “evidence of this training program in the high number of unique contacts we have in the community. Through March and August of ‘24 we had over 20,000 contacts, and zero use of force incidents.”
  • Board members had more questions about why Potter was seen as an appropriate speaker for their officers, use of force training generally, as well as concerns about “somewhat political” messaging by the organizing speaker, and the effectiveness of the agency's own training around implicit biases.
    • Garrett found Wax’s explanation avoided the question of why, “when a person as controversial as Kim Potter's name was brought to the agency as a person that was going to be on the agenda…why is it nothing was recognized as to what that would look like?” (audio - 1m, video - WSLCB, video - TVW)
      • Wax responded that “the goal of our training program, to make sure that we're providing good training, and it's also the goal…to make sure that we represent the values of the board and the agency. And it's clear that I missed the mark on that.”
    • Postman asked whether anyone on Wax’s staff had raised the issue of Potter speaking and if there’d been “any sense…through the process, that this was, in fact, controversial, or could be controversial?” (audio - 2m, video - WSLCB, video - TVW)
      • Wax answered that there hadn’t been, leading Postman to confirm that no one brought it to the attention of Lukela or the board. He then asked, “wouldn't you have wanted someone to come to you at least and say, ‘Hey, we're thinking about doing this’ and, and then we would have known, right? Then we wouldn't have had to learn this when the reporter called us.” Wax commented, “this team has a good track record of providing good training and…I think had they recognized that, we would have had that discussion and potentially come up with a different decision. But no, I didn't bring this to the board, and I didn't bring this” to Lukela’s attention.
    • Vollendroff felt the situation was one where the “leadership forgets” the experience and expertise the individual board members had, arguing that had staff considered the optics of inviting a White former-cop to speak about killing an unarmed Black suspect when the board had been repeatedly accused of overlooking racial bias, they might have chosen to seek input from Garrett, who had a history of championing social equity efforts in the cannabis sector. Regardless of their intent, Vollendroff said staff should have considered “the impact to Daunte's family, the impact to the African American community, the impact to the LCB and the board. I mean, there's just so much to unpack here.” He called for a “better process” which specifically included asking board members about prospective speakers (audio - 2m, video - WSLCB, video - TVW).
    • Postman noted this “was not a case of somebody thinking they're doing something controversial, but they didn't want to talk to us about it.” Instead, training from an ex-police officer who killed a citizen in the course of training another officer hadn’t been regarded as questionable enough to bring it to Wax’s attention, which was a problem in and of itself, argued Postman. Director Lukela—who had extensive law enforcement experience before joining WSLCB—hadn’t been consulted, Postman stated, and “what sits uneasy for me…is just the fact that it wasn't seen as something that you'd want to raise up…you want that sensitivity there. And this doesn't even seem to have had that impact” (audio - 4m, video - WSLCB, video - TVW).
      • Wax contended the training approval process had been in place for a long time and acknowledged “we need to analyze and change those systems and processes so that there is a space for that sensitivity.”
      • Garrett remained “baffled” how anyone could think Potter should be associated with the agency at all. “Nobody thought to bring up that name, that's the piece that's puzzling me as to why did we hear about it first from a reporter,” she stressed. Wax noted that someone within the agency understood it could be a big deal “and brought it to the attention of the Seattle Times.” Nonetheless, “I don't believe this is a case of a missed opportunity for us to analyze that decision prior to having it brought to our attention by the Seattle Times, and I haven't seen any evidence or heard any conversation about that being the case,” Wax added.
    • Insisting that the training team members “knew who Kim Potter was, and what, what her role in this was,” Postman felt their disregard of the controversy around her killing of Wright was the mistake, compounded by no one thinking to “double check” with WSLCB leaders. Wax replied that Ali had provided training to WASPC and WSLCB “on multiple issues related to use of force and law enforcement; and the laws as they pertain to application of use of force,” and so hiring him hadn’t been seen as a controversial decision (audio - 6m, video - WSLCB, video - TVW).
      • When Postman pointed out that those laws were state-specific, Wax clarified that Ali would talk “about the trends in law enforcement, use of force laws and the changes across the nation.”
      • Postman conveyed that one difficulty for him had been finding examples of Potter’s remarks to other groups, as board members “didn't have a lot of information, even internally about this.” He appreciated Ali’s history with WASPC, “but as I've looked at what…emails” said about the presentation, he saw more “red flags.” While the curriculum featured “mandated training that officers need, but then there's…team building or whatever, and less technical training” which Postman said “seemed somewhat political.” The email mentioned how Potter would “talk about the truth of what occurred, which jumped out at me only because there was a trial. I would think we knew the truth,” Postman remarked. He said the description of the presentation covered “the increased violence and noncompliance directed towards law enforcement,” rather than the “issue of law enforcement, use of force, lethal force.”
      • Postman acknowledged that specifics on the program were lacking, but “what was most alarming to me was the follow up we got from Imran Ali when he was asked to discuss what this presentation would include.” He’d found that Ali planned on covering use of force policies and related court cases, and Potter’s talk involved “the importance of making the right versus wrong choices,” plus “lessons learned and impact.” Postman recognized how this could be impactful for Enforcement staff to hear first hand, “but it says: ‘Participants will discuss propaganda and how it has influenced many decisions relating to law enforcement, while examining the origins of propaganda in modern times. Participants will see how it infiltrated into Minnesota and how that charged officer involved use of force cases are adjudicated in this changing climate.’”
      • The concept of propaganda “just jumps out at me,” said Postman. He couldn’t see how this had a direct relation to use of force training, something he saw as “more about the changing political climate in America or something else.” Relating lethal force training for law enforcement “through the lens of how propaganda, misinformation, outside influences, kind of pervert this process [didn’t] feel good to me to say that's how we want to spend our money and time training.”
      • Wax noted that the email Postman cited had only been sent to WSLCB on September 12th and she hadn’t seen the presentation Ali described previously. Her understanding was that the training team had reviewed Ali’s previous presentation on the subject from 2023, and was aware of “the addition of Miss Potter, who would talk about- when you say ‘the truth,’ I asked staff what they understood that to mean, and staff indicated that she would talk about how she made the wrong decision and what the impacts of that decision were from an officer's perspective.”
    • Vollendroff viewed the situation as raising questions about the implicit bias training WSLCB staff received, saying he understood Potter’s defense at trial had included blaming Wright for resisting her orders. “That alone is reason for pause and to stop and think about what that defense means and what it's saying about the experience of Black and Brown communities and their experience with law enforcement,” he argued. Cognizant of the value of training, Vollendroff still regarded the specifics of Potter’s situation to be troubling. He said that while “there wasn't explicit bias here, but there was definitely implicit bias.” Board members had “a responsibility to continue to have conversations about and recognize that we all have bias, and how does that impact our decisions?”  (audio - 9m, video - WSLCB, video - TVW)
      • Garrett saw how this circumstance would tie into prior accusations board members had been “hearing for years…as being tone deaf to the community, and we went through a whole enforcement reform because of bias.” Despite regularly hearing externally about bias, it was obviously missed internally, she said, “and we've had a lot of implicit bias training and on, and on within the agency. But to be here today with this conversation, after everything that we've gone through” was unfortunate. Garrett had been surprised by the email from Ali, and expressed frustration “nobody caught that this is a bad decision, before someone leaked it to a reporter.”
      • Postman agreed with concerns of implicit bias, but took issue with Garrett’s characterization that racial bias was a contributing factor to the Enforcement reforms recommended in a 2019 report by firm Hillard Heintze. “I don't think that was spurred by allegations of a racial bias. In this case, it largely had to do with concern from the industry and the legislature of a heavy handed approach towards cannabis, specifically,” he stated. Yet Garrett pushed back on his reasoning, stating that she was the only board member still serving from that time and remembered there was, “across the state, outreach meetings with the community. Each board member went to one of those hearings and heard directly from the community of the bias, of how they felt like they were being treated, given reprimands or what violations, so that I just want to correct you on that statement. You weren't on the board at the time.”
      • Vollendroff complimented staff while insisting that implicit bias was a concern, commenting how staff acted swiftly to cancel Potter’s remarks once made aware of them, and hopeful that they could have stronger processes to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Vollendroff wasn’t concerned about identifying the person who leaked the situation to the press, but did want WSLCB to “have an environment where people can bring these kind of things forward.” He speculated that “if I am a person of color in enforcement and I'm told, ‘Hey, we're bringing this person to do this training’...I would be concerned, and I would [hope training team staff think of] the impact to people of color who are part of their team, and that just doesn't seem like it occurred.”
      • Wax concurred with the importance of ensuring the board’s concerns were translated into process changes. Postman was supportive, but argued the “harder piece is…how do we instill in people that…when there is a problem, the fact that somebody felt they needed to go outside the organization, I think, [was] its own sort of failure.” In trying to cultivate such an environment at the agency, he asked, “how do we get everybody here to just kind of help police ourselves…to question what we do and to challenge each other…in a polite way, but, but not be afraid to ask those questions in a meeting.” Additionally, Postman wanted everyone at the agency to know when things “happen that people aren't happy about, how do we create a system where those people feel like they can” speak up about whatever is making them uncomfortable. Postman credited Lukela with attempting to provide that space to employees, “but something's not working in this instance, and I think that's also important for us.”
      • Thinking more specifically about use of force training, Postman expressed confidence “police officers learn a lot from former police officers. I get that. I also got to believe there's a lot to be learned from people outside of that field, who are involved in it, and the power of bringing people in who otherwise might not have the opportunity to talk to law enforcement.”
      • Garrett echoed Postman’s point that someone in WSLCB didn’t feel safe enough to speak up with their concerns. Furthermore, “we spent a lot of time talking about enforcement, and education, and doing things different, but…we keep leaning toward…being trained as police officers.”

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