Quick story: In 2015, then-Deputy Chief Carmen Best returned a beloved golf club to 69-year-old William Wingate. It had been confiscated during a wrongful arrest. They celebrated with this photo:

Wingate is a veteran and retired bus driver who grew up in the Jim Crow South. He'd gone his whole life without getting into trouble with the law. Until—

On July 9, 2014, on his daily walk, an officer named Cynthia Whitlatch drove by him, jumped out, accused him of swinging the golf club at her as she drove (???), and arrested him.

Incidentally this all happened within a one-block radius of SPD's East Precinct—what later became the CHAZ/CHOP. Later, Wingate would testify that being cuffed and made to walk the block to the precinct was among the most humiliating things he'd ever experienced.

Officers of diverse backgrounds made the arrest. Whitlatch is a lesbian. Chris Coles is white. Joe Lam, an Asian-American, screened it. Capt. Pierre Davis, who is Black, was the precinct supervisor. Wingate, terrified, was placed in the back of a vehicle and jailed overnight.

Long story short, the department thought everything had been made good and it was a "win" for the community when—after some prominent community leaders complained—the charges were quietly dropped and Best personally returned the golf club to Wingate.

They were wrong. Video of the arrest leaked (to me). Turned out Whitlatch had a history of bad decisions and she'd been ranting on Facebook about "black racists." Wingate sued the department and a jury awarded him $325,000 in civil rights damages. Whitlatch was eventually fired.

I see Best's role here not as personally malicious but ultimately quite harmful. Like her colleagues, she effectively covered up for the racial bias and abuse of power that was baked in to what Whitlatch and other officers did Wingate, instead of investigating it.

This episode occurred while SPD was under an active federal consent decree to curb racial bias and excessive force. Maybe some useful context when considering the blunt force cuts the city council made to SPD's budget, what "reform" means, and Best's decision to resign.