Police union's president leads from the front

Sgt. Rich O'Neill, recently elected to his third term as president of the Seattle Police Officers' Guild, says recent calls by city officials to modify Seattle's police-accountability system will have to be hashed out at the bargaining table.

"I'm not going anywhere. I'm a deal maker and I want to cut a deal," said O'Neill, 52, who represents the Police Department's 1,250 officers and sergeants.

A few recent incidents have prompted a U.S. Department of Justice review into whether officers have engaged in a pattern of unnecessary force, particularly against minorities.

"The only time we'll say 'no, no, no' is when they try to impose something without bargaining," says O'Neill says, "City leaders fail to recognize the union's long history of participating in community discussions and negotiating changes to officers' working conditions."

A father of four grown children and a veteran of 30 years on the Seattle police force, O'Neill was first elected president of the union in 2006. He has become the public face — and voice — of the department's beat cops, detectives and front-line supervisors.

"Our department muzzles them," O'Neill said, referring to a policy created by former Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske and continued under Chief John Diaz that bars officers below the rank of lieutenant from speaking publicly about the department without permission from their commanders.

"I get so many e-mails from officers who are so proud of my willingness to get out there and stand up for them... I'll never apologize for standing up for officers," he said.

He took plenty of political heat for defending an article published in January in the union newspaper, The Guardian, in which Officer Steve Pomper called the city's 5-year-old Race and Social Justice Initiative an attack on American values and characterized its supporters as "the enemy."

McGinn criticized The Guardian and O'Neill's position that officers are simply exercising their free-speech rights.

"Their union newspaper contains within it inflammatory comments about the Seattle public, the Seattle leadership and Seattle values, which harm public confidence in the police force," the mayor said. "The words and actions from the union speak to the public as well, and those opinions also drive mistrust."

"It certainly does no good for the mayor to have a lack of history and come out and perpetuate these stereotypes about the union," O'Neill responds. "Do we really want that? A government that can tell us what to think? Isn't that Pomper's point?"

O'Neill said Pomper can hold any opinions he wants, so long as he checks them at the door when it's time to go to work. He pointed out that the 19-year veteran hasn't received a single citizen complaint during his career patrolling the city's diverse East Precinct.

O'Neill said he's proved his willingness to engage the community, and has met with various groups, including El Centro de la Raza and the city's African-American Community Advisory Council following high-profile police incidents.

"People don't see the horse-trading that goes on at the bargaining table," O'Neill said. "It gets a little frustrating when people think negotiating means just giving them what they want. That's not how it works."

When officers do use force — and it's captured on video — O'Neill said "there's no way force looks pretty." But he cautioned the public from passing judgment on officers' conduct based on a "20-second snippet."

"Video has exonerated a lot of officers. I ... think we need to educate people about what they're seeing," he said.

Public criticism of officers often fails to take into account "that we're not perfect but we've got it pretty darn good in Seattle," he said, noting that in 2009, 85 percent of the city's cops did not receive a single complaint and use-of-force incidents are one-fifth below the national average.

ORIGINAL SOURCE