The Spokane County Regional Law and Justice Council (SRLJC), an intergovernmental committee made up of representatives from the community, the legal system, the police force and elected officials, was created to reimagine what criminal justice could look like in Spokane. Instead, leaders of color say it has become another page in a familiar story: communities of color go unheard or are actively overruled by the governing organizations that claim to be willing to come to the table for criminal justice.
The most recent refrain happened at Tuesday’s Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) meeting, where the board voted, in a 3-2 split along the well-worn ideological line that often divides the group, to appoint Jennifer Morton to the SRLJC. Morton was described by Commissioner Mary Kuney as having an impressive resume, including 16 years of military service and holding an executive assistant position under former Mayor David Condon. But Commissioners Amber Waldref and Chris Jordan, who frequently find themselves the minority to the conservative blockade of Kuney, Commissioners Al French and Josh Kerns, said Morton’s experience wasn’t the problem, her position was.
The seat on the board that Morton was confirmed to was intended to go to a community representative who would chair the SRLJC’s Racial Equity subcommittee. Individuals from communities impacted by the criminal justice system, individuals with prior criminal history and individuals who filled gaps and would broaden committee representation were particularly encouraged to apply. Morton is a Black woman, but she is also an elected official, sitting on Airway Heights’ City Council. The membership makeup of the SRLJC has long been a topic of debate and site of power-struggle, with the number of seats allocated to community members slashed in a Larry Haskell-led charge. Jordan and Waldref commented in the meeting that Morton’s appointment could be seen as taking away a hard-won seat from the community and giving it back to electeds.
“I believe his position should have been filled by a community voice who can bring an outside perspective, not an elected official whose job is to work within the government,” Jordan said in a message to RANGE.
The vote to confirm Morton came after the Spokane NAACP sent out a press release signed by other community organizations and leaders yesterday advocating against Morton, on the basis of her being a “non-community connected individual.”
RANGE called Kurtis Robinson, president of the NAACP, who penned the letter to ask about the potential impacts of the decision to confirm Morton. He sees her as someone who will represent the desires of the three counselors who voted to confirm her, rather than the communities of color who have been disproportionately impacted by the criminal legal system.
“The concern is that [the SRLJC] will continue to represent status quo dynamics. The concern is that that pattern will continue. Sandy Williams spoke about that emphatically,” Robinson said. “But they don't want to hear it. They don't want community at the table. They don't want to actually sit down and listen. Because if they listen and they really hear it, then they might have to do something different. And they have no intention of doing that, at least at this stage of the game, and especially under the view of how they handled this process.”
The press release, which was also signed by Peace and Justice Action League, Tenants Union of Washington and Greater Spokane Progress, among others, cited problems with the SRLJC as a whole, including the “systemic dialing back of meaningful community voice” in decision-making processes, and a laundry list of other frustrations including the BOCC’s support of efforts to construct a new jail, the inclusion of Larry Haskell on the SRLJC, after his wife’s white supremacist comments (she calls herself a white nationalist) and the denial of “at least one or more, fully qualified, very community connected, impacted people of color candidates.”
Prior to the vote to appoint Morton, Jordan, seconded by Waldref, had motioned to defer the vote for a month to give interested community members more time to apply (they were outvoted in the same 3-2 split). But, the issue wasn’t entirely that community members weren’t interested in the job, in fact, Curtis Hampton, an outspoken and experienced community justice advocate, had applied for the position twice.
His applications had never moved past the selection committee phase to be considered publicly by the BOCC.
According to Waldref, Hampton had first applied for the position in September of 2022, but because this was before she and Jordan took office, neither of them know why he wasn’t considered for the position.
Both Jordan and Waldref, who sent out a press release decrying the BOCC’s decision before the meeting had even concluded, confirmed to RANGE that Hampton had recently reapplied again, just after Morton’s application was put on the agenda for the BOCC to review.
Though the position had been open for a year, there was no reason to rush the process; according to Jordan, the SRLJC wasn’t even intending to meet for the rest of the calendar year. Instead of taking the time to consider Hampton’s application, only one name was put on the agenda.
“Today the board majority decided to advance only an elected official for consideration rather than opening up the discussion to consider others or to invite more applications from community voices,” Jordan told RANGE. “I am disappointed the county missed an opportunity today to build trust with civil rights advocates by not pursuing a more open process which could have included intentional outreach to impacted communities and wider public input.”
So why was Morton touted as the only option? An answer may lie in one of Kerns’ comments at the dais in support of Morton.
“We're looking for people that are willing to work to improve our criminal justice system, not abolish law enforcement and jail,” Kerns said. “And I think Jennifer is going to do a great job moving our community forward on that, on that council.”
County Communications Director Pat Bell told RANGE, “Kerns was referencing in his remarks this afternoon that several of the groups who signed the letter have as part of their platforms or agendas to abolish or disband the police, jails and prisons,” and attached videos linking to Asians for Collective Liberations’ Vote No on Measure 1 video and Spokane County Against Racism’s (SCAR) Platform for Change.
SCAR wasn’t one of the groups that signed onto the NAACP’s letter. Hampton, however, did sign the letter.
Bell said Hampton’s first application was considered in November of 2022 but was not chosen to move forward in the process. He didn’t mention the second application.
On the surface, this may read like a trivial political battle for one seat on a committee that’s spent most of its time in the last two years restructuring, but Robinson doesn’t want people to forget the real world impacts this decision will have.
“Over-jailing people, and over-criminalizing them while all the while trying to expand on the process that's got regular amounts of unnecessary deaths under their watch is absolutely inherently harmful to our East Washington community and our communities of color, and they know that,” Robinson said.
“Do the right thing. Listen to the people who are actually boots on the ground in this that know what it takes to heal our communities.”
