Washington Supreme Court Sends Police Use-of-Force Initiative to the November Election Ballot

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OLYMPIA — The Washington state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that an initiative that would make it easier to prosecute law-enforcement officers accused of misusing deadly force must go on the November election ballot.

Tuesday’s decision comes after a Thurston County Superior Court judge in April ruled that the Washington Legislature’s unprecedented maneuver earlier this year to change the police deadly force law violated the state constitution.

In that court order, Judge Christine Schaller said legislators had acted improperly when they passed a bill making changes to I-940 before approving the initiative itself.

She ordered the Washington Secretary of State’s Office to put I-940 on the November ballot.

I-940 was an initiative to the Legislature, which gave lawmakers three options: Pass the initiative without changing it, take no action and let the initiative go to the November ballot, or propose their own version and let both proposals go to the ballot.



Instead, lawmakers first passed a compromise bill to make changes to I-940 once they also voted to approve the initiative. And then they passed the initiative itself.

The bill making changes to I-940 had been agreed upon by De-Escalate Washington, the group pushing the initiative, and some law-enforcement groups, which had largely opposed previous efforts to change Washington law.

Washington’s law is considered the nation’s most restrictive in holding officers legally accountable for using deadly force found to be unjustified.

The statute means it is nearly impossible for prosecutors to bring criminal charges, even when they found an officer to have wrongfully killed someone, according to a 2015 report by The Seattle Times.

The report found that 213 people in Washington were killed by police between 2005 and 2014 — but only a single officer was charged with a crime. That officer was acquitted by a jury.