Justice Forral was walking downtown on their way to Spokane’s Pride parade last year when they heard their name in what sounded like police radio chatter. They looked back and saw three Spokane police officers tailing them and their partner on the other side of the street.
“ I say, ‘Hey, why are you following us?’” Forral told RANGE. “And then they start looking up into the sky, pretending like they're not [following us].”
Forral said they couldn’t tell how many officers were talking about them on the radio but that “it just felt like the entire police department.”
The officers kept following Forral, eventually arresting them on the north side of the Spokane Convention Center, just yards from where hundreds of parade participants and thousands of parade-goers had gathered. Forral, who was wearing a knee-length floral dress and black boots on their way to celebrate queer communities at the time of the arrest, cooperated. The arrest served a warrant issued by the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office alleging Forral had assaulted a law enforcement officer during a protest the week before at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on Cataldo Avenue.
Forral, an outspoken advocate for Spokane’s BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities, suspects they were targeted for reasons that went well beyond their participation in that particular protest.
As fellow activist Jim Leighty learned from a police report he obtained from a public records request, Forral may have been right.
The police report Leighty had requested, dated June 20, 2021, made it clear that Forral had been flagged with what’s known among regional police as a “T3” code. When officers respond to a call involving someone with this designation, the code alerts them to pay extra attention to their personal safety, said Tricia Leming, a Spokane police spokesperson.
“This does not change how officers respond, other than that dispatch may sometimes dispatch an additional officer or an officer may request backup when contacting someone with a T3 alert,” Leming wrote in an email.
The T3 flag is part of a broader set of “temperament codes,” or “T codes,” that warn police in Eastern Washington of potentially dangerous conditions at the site of calls to which they respond.
But some say the codes allow police to unfairly target activists, like Forral, or others who don’t deserve heightened police scrutiny.
Forral is a known face in local activist circles, but the closest they’ve ever come to being accused of violence was for knocking off the hat of a sheriff’s deputy during the June 11 protest.
Yet they said the T code applied to their record may have dogged their activism for years now.
Their arrest was another chapter in an ongoing series of incidents pitting activists against local, regional and federal law enforcement that has captivated Spokane for more than a year now. But the nuances of Forral’s run-ins with police illustrate an entrenched aspect of local law enforcement that new Spokane police leaders are trying to change.
Forral was convicted in May along with two other June 11 protesters on federal conspiracy charges related to the protests that day. Their T code may not have been a factor in the conviction itself, but it does explain one way police keep tabs on folks who come into contact with police, sometimes through criminal activity but other times through working in publicly visible activist communities.
People and places
T codes are described in the Spokane Police Department’s policy manual according to the following schedule:
- T3: Officer Safety
- T4: Gang
- T7: Deceased
- T8: Universal Precaution Warning
- T9: Armed and Dangerous
T8 was once used to warn officers of people who were known to have HIV/AIDS, but Leming said it hasn’t been used that way for years.
T codes are different from “Ten codes,” a communication practice first responders and CB operators use to briefly communicate important details over radio transmissions.
The codes aren’t new, and they aren’t unique to Spokane. Police departments across the country use similar systems, and other forces in Spokane County — including the sheriff’s office — use them as well, Leming said.
“Like other T codes, it is a safety indicator that provides relevant information to officers quickly as they assess risk in any given interaction,” Leming said.
Leming said she could not provide a list of people who have a T code applied to their file; and, responding to a records request from RANGE, the department said it doesn’t keep a list at all.
A dated system
Spokane police will reform the T code system this fall when the department replaces its records management software, Leming said. Though Leming didn’t address specific stories like Forral’s, she said the reform would help keep police accountable when interacting with the public.
“The current process for assigning a T code is that a staff member in the department requests it based on an interaction or series of interactions where concerning behavior is observed or documented,” Leming said. “It can be a patrol-level officer.”
The report Leighty obtained from the police does not identify the reason for Forral’s T code or when or by whom it was requested; it simply states the activist has one.
But the changes Leming described will force Spokane police officers to document the reasons they request a T code.
Leming said the new system will help “ensure our practices and policy reflect modern police best practices in accountability and fairness while still maintaining the importance of safety for the officer and public.” She outlined a list of differences between the current system and the one that will take effect later this year.
First, whereas the old system allowed officers to request a T code for people based on their subjective judgment of an interaction in the street, the new one will require “a defined source of truth (court order, case number, or documented supervisor review).”
Leming also said any request to create a T code dealing with safety will require a supervisor to review it.
In Spokane’s current system, a T code stays on a person’s record for 100 years. Under the new system, all flags will expire after three years.
Part of the reason the reforms are being proposed, said Spokane Police Chief Kevin Hall, is because police officers are not qualified to make some of the judgment calls that would justify a T code.
“I don’t want the officers making psychological or medical diagnoses,” said Hall, who Mayor Lisa Brown hired at the end of 2024.
He also said he hoped the reforms he’s implementing at the department will build public trust with the police.
“It’s my job to bring that divide closer together,” he said.
The coming reform to the T code system is a good thing, said Leighty, who is a police accountability activist, in that it reflects a shifting culture in the Spokane Police Department, which has been one of the most deadly police departments in the country, according to the organization Mapping Police Violence.
Leighty also said the police department’s willingness to reevaluate the T code policy and other new programs like protest dialogue teams, is a sign for hope.
“It shows that SPD is actually trying to make changes for the better,” he said.
