The KPTZ program called “The Reckoning,” was supposed to be a moderated conversation between Jefferson County Sheriff Joe Nole and a Native American woman, an organizer of Black Lives Matter of Jefferson County and an Hispanic man, with Port Townsend’s Mayor jumping in at the end. It was announced as “an open conversation about racial prejudice in policing, especially in our county.”

The show aired for two hours on Thursday, July 30, 2020. The moderators were far from impartial. One of them, KPTZ radio show host Paul Rice, has encouraged activists to pursue and harass a local law enforcement family and in the past has himself attempted to injure the reputation of at least one other law enforcement official. This program was created and sold as a kind of set-up of our Sheriff. It fell short. Instead of a set-up, it was pathetic

“The Reckoning” was hardly a conversation about prejudice in policing in Jefferson County because the panelists offered nothing on the subject that could be substantively discussed. They threw around vague, sometimes vicious allegations against no one in particular. They never offered proof or evidence for their wild claims.

Much of what the panelists said was irresponsible, intending to fan the flames of racial tensions rather than making it possible to achieve any sort of understanding and accord.

First some facts on the Sheriff’s office: The Jefferson County Sheriff has had no officer involved shootings since the 1930s. No complaints of racial prejudice have been filed against any Sheriff’s deputy in recent memory. There has been civil litigation over the years over everything from the death of a violent prisoner with a bad heart racing on meth to public records act disputes. As far as I know, though, the Sheriff’s Office has not had any court judgments against it nor settled any claims based on charges of racist behavior. It has not been the subject of any investigation for abuses of force or racial misconduct by the Washington State Attorney General or the U.S. Department of Justice.

Now, on to the panelists:

Cameron Jones, one of the leaders of Black Lives Matter of Jefferson County, claimed that 30% of Jefferson County’s Black citizens have been imprisoned in the county jail in a single year. Where in the world did he get that from? Jefferson County in the 2010 census had about 30,000 people, 1% of whom were Black. That would mean that 100 Black residents of Jefferson County (1/3 of 300) were in our county jail that year. There would be a list of those 100 Black inmates–if those alleged prisoners existed. Jones did not offer or claim to have such a list. He never explained the source of the information for his wild allegation.

Sheriff Nole told Jones he was absolutely wrong. Jones might be confusing our small jail with the STATE correctional facility at Clearwater on the west side. That large facility holds people from all over Washington. And there’s that little problem of size: our county jail cannot hold 100 people.

Later Jones challenged Sheriff Nole to explain what he was doing about the “white supremacy and vigilante groups operating” in Jefferson County. He also suggested that somebody had lynched five Blacks in Jefferson County. Yes, Sheriff Nole said, over a number of years there have been five Blacks who died by hanging in different areas of the county. Nole said each sad, tragic case had been investigated and no evidence of any malicious activity had been found. These were suicides. We do have a serious problem with suicide that we don’t like to acknowledge. We have also had several White people who have hung themselves in recent years.

Jones said “someone in our group” had been researching the cases and found suggestions of foul play. He didn’t say what that evidence was, who was doing this research or offer to share it with the Sheriff so the cases could get another look, if warranted.

Jones also didn’t offer any evidence–not a single specific instance–of any activity by “white supremacist and vigilante groups operating in Jefferson County.” Who are these groups?  I emailed Jones to ask what information he had on them and what they had been doing. This is something law enforcement, city, local, state and federal should know about. He did not answer my questions. It is not unreasonable to conclude he is just making this up in an effort to paint Jefferson County as some sort of Klan infested, deep South backwater from last century. That misperception helps his group’s political activities and fundraising but disserves a county of good, decent people who would not tolerate such organizations in their midst.

Jones also said “people of color are afraid to move here “because we don’t have a multi-cultural community center” and Port Townsend has Victorian architecture. Seriously, he said this.

Jones leveled hearsay allegations by an anonymous source that ten years ago a former school resource officer–now Port Townsend’s Interim Police Chief–had “acted with petulance toward youth of color,” whatever that means. And he complained about an ongoing case in which a Black man called law enforcement to report his truck stolen. It was located by deputies and found to have been burned. The complaint by this man is that police “questioned him aggressively” and “showed up in excessive force.” Not that they used excessive force. He just believes too many police responded to the call and he is upset they did not immediately believe him. No allegation of deputies using racially pejorative terms has been raised.

On his Facebook page the owner of the burned truck alleges that, though he does not know who allegedly stole and burned his vehicle, he believes he was the target of racial animosity.  BLM of Jefferson County says of this incident, “The escalation continues,” though they don’t know what happened. A Go Fund Me campaign has attracted over $8,000 to help this man buy another vehicle. This is an active, unsolved case for which I am trying to obtain records. From what I can gather at this point, the question of whether a theft really occurred remains unanswered.

Jones read a statement by Paris Jade, a Black woman. She had three incidents to report. She said that in the first three to four months she moved here she was followed by the same officer “almost every day on my way home, and out and about and especially at night.”

This officer must have been working a double shift for 3-4 months, and not doing anything else but following Ms. Jade. One also must wonder how could she know it was the same officer behind her…at night?

She was never stopped, never arrested. She was never questioned. She never filed a complaint. But suddenly and without explanation it all stopped and she’s still here. She mentioned no other contacts with law enforcement in the past three years.

From my ride-alongs with police, I know they are in almost constant contact one way or another with a network of law enforcement resources. Officers and deputies can see on their computer where other units in service are and know generally what they are doing. I might be overstating that a bit, but officers are not free without explanation to follow a car for any signficant length of time, over and over, day and night, for more than 120 consecutive days.  It might be possible that what Jade claims happened happened. It is highly improbable.

Her misperception, overreaction, whatever you want to call it, to the two other incidents she brings up undermine her crediblity on this claim of being followed almost every day and “especially at night”  for up to four months. In the first, she saw someone wearing a MAGA hat and, in the second, she saw another person wearing traditional clothes of a culture not their own. This is being exposed to racism, she claims.

If this is all the “racism” she has experienced in PT in more than three years of living here, it is a pretty solid acquittal of our community.

Though other panelists poured out subjective feelings and spouted political theory, including calling for the destruction of capitalism and insisting that “the people” can police themselves (good luck with those midnight domestic violence calls, robberies, burglaries, car chases, rapes, agg assaults, and murders), they cited not a single instance of racially prejudiced police misconduct.

At the end of the discussion, Port Townsend Mayor Michele Sandoval weighed in. She had powerful evidence of racism to offer. Here it is: she lost by 150 votes when she ran for county commissioner twenty some years ago. She emoted for several minutes, but never mentioned a single instance of racism by police or another member of a community that has kept her in office as Mayor or City Councilor for the past two decades. (Was the fact she was not elected unanimously in each of those elections evidence of racism? Is it racism if someone simply disagrees with her?)

Sandoval ended in tears and the broadcast was promptly wrapped up. Listeners were left at a loss to understand what she was crying about because in all the time given her she did not describe a single experience where someone hurt or discriminated against her or anyone else because of race or ethnicity–except maybe those 150 people twenty years ago who voted for someone else.

One could say that this was an unproductive waste of time and a cynical attempt by some to widen racial divisions with rumor and innuendo. But it did show that we don’t have a racism problem with law enforcement in this community. On the other hand, we do have a problem with people who desperately want to believe they are surrounded by racism when they are not.