From the archives (New York Times Magazine; Oct. 23, 2016): On his first day on the job in the Seattle Police Department, Mike Wagers was invited to an urgent meeting about transparency. It was July 28, 2014, little more than a week after Eric Garner was killed on Staten Island, less than two weeks before Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Mo., and police departments around the country were facing a new era of public scrutiny. Wagers, who has a Ph.D. in criminal justice from Rutgers, was the Seattle department’s new chief operating officer, a 42-year-old civilian in jeans and square-rimmed glasses. He’d left his wife and two kids in Virginia and come alone to Seattle, a city he didn’t know — where it rained but cultural norms, he’d read, didn’t allow you to use an umbrella — because the job was what he called “the chance of a lifetime.” Seattle was the first big-city police department in a decade to have come under what is known as a consent decree — police reform by federal fiat — after a string of violent police actions against black, Latino and Native American people were caught on camera in 2009 and 2010. Wagers and his new boss, Chief Kathleen O’Toole, herself just arrived in Seattle, would use the best new thinking and the best new technology to lead the turnaround. And then Wagers would go home.
Should We See Everything a Cop Sees?
Should We See Everything a Cop Sees?
Should We See Everything a Cop Sees?
From the archives (New York Times Magazine; Oct. 23, 2016): On his first day on the job in the Seattle Police Department, Mike Wagers was invited to an urgent meeting about transparency. It was July 28, 2014, little more than a week after Eric Garner was killed on Staten Island, less than two weeks before Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Mo., and police departments around the country were facing a new era of public scrutiny. Wagers, who has a Ph.D. in criminal justice from Rutgers, was the Seattle department’s new chief operating officer, a 42-year-old civilian in jeans and square-rimmed glasses. He’d left his wife and two kids in Virginia and come alone to Seattle, a city he didn’t know — where it rained but cultural norms, he’d read, didn’t allow you to use an umbrella — because the job was what he called “the chance of a lifetime.” Seattle was the first big-city police department in a decade to have come under what is known as a consent decree — police reform by federal fiat — after a string of violent police actions against black, Latino and Native American people were caught on camera in 2009 and 2010. Wagers and his new boss, Chief Kathleen O’Toole, herself just arrived in Seattle, would use the best new thinking and the best new technology to lead the turnaround. And then Wagers would go home.