City leaders in Spokane are trying to understand the strings attached if they accept a grant from the Department of Justice.
Spokane’s Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS, wants to accept a DOJ grant to hire eight more police officers.
The grant comes with 39 conditions, some of which raise flags with citizens and city council members.
City officials are asking if one of the conditions prohibits the Spokane Police Department from following the Keep Washington Working Act.
That’s the state law that forbids local officers from asking about immigration status.
Condition 2 of the grant says that grantees "may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, receiving from, maintaining, or exchanging information regarding citizenship or immigration status... This includes any prohibitions or restrictions imposed or established by a state or local government entity or official."
Council member Kitty Klitzke read a statement from police chief Kevin Hall at Monday night's legislative meeting. It said that since the Spokane Police Department doesn't collect any information on citizenship or immigration status, it doesn't have anything to share.
Klitzke said that these conundrums are becoming more common for city and state governments.
“There's a lot of grants out there from housing funding to transportation funding where these qualifications are being put in," she said. "So all of us as smaller governments, local governments, state agencies—we are having to figure out how we can still stand up for our values and protect our democracy and not cut our own citizens off from federal funding. These are your tax dollars.”
Other conditions raise other concerns. One says the grant recipient will be closely monitored by the DOJ to ensure compliance during the five-year grant life and for three years after.
Another says the grant recipient may be required to modify its community policing plan to include priorities it didn’t initially identify, including homeland and border security.
City Council deferred deciding whether to accept the grant. It will hold a special meeting on Thursday to get more of its questions answered.
As previously reported by SPR, the DOJ grant would award COPS $1 million.
The city would need to provide about $5 million over the next five years to pay for the remainder of the new hires' salaries.
"There's federal money—one-third for three years," Assistant Chief Matt Cowles explained to City Council in December. "Our matching funds would be the remaining costs for a full-time employee as a police officer for those first three years and then continuing on to a full five years.”
Management and Budget director Jessica Stratton told City Council this week that based on current projections, the city could find the required funds for the grant.
