Last fall, Spokane community leaders created the Safe and Healthy Task Force. Its goal is to improve Spokane’s response to its public safety and public health-related problems.
The group was announced at the end of September. Since then, subcommittees have convened to research issues and offer recommendations to local elected officials by the end of May. Though meetings of the task force and its subcommittees are available for viewing, most of its work has mostly been done out of the public eye. Today, we invite two of its members to tell us more about their discussions.
We're joined by Dr. Melissa Mace, the executive director of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, and Chud Wendle, executive director of the Hutton Settlement Children’s Home. Mace is a member of the Custody Strategies and Courts subcommittee. Wendle is a member of the Facilities, Infrastructure and System Coordination subcommittee.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
DN: What have been your expectations of this process? What do you hope will come from it?
Melissa Mace: I hope that everything really comes to fruition. Everything that is discussed, I think they've done a really good job of inviting and listening to different perspectives. It's not just the police and the people in the jail. It is a very wide range of leaders and people with lived experiences and personalities and expertise and they've done a really good job of leaning in and listening and taking notes and coming back and receiving the feedback and following through. I think that is really different. That's what speaks to me, the difference in what's going on now than what I've heard about what's been historically what has happened. And I think that's really nice. It's refreshing.
DN: Chud, what were your expectations?
Chud Wendle: I came in from the business side probably with a pretty shallow lens from the standpoint that we were getting impacted. I manage commercial properties for the nonprofit and we were getting impacted with just the challenges our community was facing regarding homelessness and drug use and we had vandalism and so I came with a lens from that perspective. And then coming off of the Measure 1 defeat [a jail proposal in 2023], I think the simple solution was like, oh, we just need a new jail that's going to fix everything. And that measure failed greatly.
I think a lot of it was just what was missing is what the work is happening right now. So I came in thinking, oh, we're going to come together and have a new jail. Well, there is a lot more to it. And I think my eyes have been opened as well as others that I've spoke to and who I've been able to share that we were able to look at a model in Miami-Dade County from Judge Leifman. And I think that's where we started. And that began to really say what's happening in the jail isn't right.
DN: In terms of?
CW: Well, I think there's a lot of individuals in the jail with severe challenges that shouldn't be there, whether it's mental health or substance abuse disorders. And we're not giving a fair shot to them or the community. And so I think this puzzle is very complex and how the community comes together and crafts it. We have the right people at the table to do that, I believe. And whether it's lived experience or whether it's businesses, nonprofits, providers, the judicial system is a complex beast that I didn't even really appreciate some of the challenges that we're dealing with as it relates to the judicial system.
My prayers are that this conversation doesn't end with just delivering a product to the elected officials that we continue the movement and the efforts that this group has brought together and started.
DN: Melissa, Chud has talked about what he has learned out of all this. What are your big lessons learned so far?
MM: I've learned that we are very siloed and I think that a lot of the times that people think, well, of course you're supposed to know that. And, of course, you should have, like, duh. The realization is that we all really just focus on ourselves a lot of the time and you don't know because we don't have time to step outside of ourselves and what's going on with us in our lives and livelihoods. And I think that perspective really shines a light on the greater issue of everything else because we don't necessarily know what happened before, after, during to place those people in jail or unhoused or dependent on substances. We don't know any of those things and you don't know those things unless you take a moment and check in. And that is really what we've been doing on the Safe and Healthy Spokane Task Force. What's the perspective of the jails and the judges. What's the perspective of those who have experienced the services?
DN: You each sit on one of four subcommittees. Have you gotten to the point where you think here are things that we should recommend to the overall Safe and Healthy Spokane committee? Have you gotten to that point yet or are you still learning and talking?
CW: We're getting there. I'm involved with the committee that's Facilities, Infrastructure, and Systems Coordination, which is a big one. It's a very diverse group also involved with that committee. We have work to do, a lot of work to do. We're looking at some best cases, I guess best practices, out throughout the country. And there's some models out there that stand out that I think we can't necessarily pick up and place here in Spokane. I think the word Spokanize has come out, but we have to Spokanize it a bit.
There's a center in Nashville that has shown amazing results in regards to how they're working with the diversion piece of it, where if it's a situation where somebody's arrested for a crime, but going through a mental challenge, they would go in and be diverted immediately to the mental health piece of it. And so what it exactly looks like, we still have a lot of work to do, but we're a lot closer than we were six months ago.
DN: Melissa, you're nodding here.
MM: I agree a million percent. I'm on the courts and judges and things committee, which is very outside of my life and best practice. We've worked really hard on listening and leaning in and understanding all of the inner workings of the jails and the judges and court processing and understanding and my expertise in mental health, I'm leaning into allowing them to see the other side, like rights and HIPAA and people don't show up as their best self when you're under distress. I think they've been very open to receiving that and pivoting. And I think my co-chairs really have actionable responses. They moved into and made a change, I think within two to three months of this, to do soft handoffs and thinking about when we're releasing people to treatment or other programs, like what time are we releasing people? Midnight, that might not be as helpful. And so they've worked really hard to coordinate and make that change as good faith that they are invested in changing the process, in seeing people where they are in this moment and assisting them to be a little bit better tomorrow.
DN: Your subcommittees are going to report back to the Safe and Healthy Spokane, the lead task force in May. When you do that, who is in charge of enacting the things that you've talked about? What is the process there?
CW: My understanding is that the original mission was to have the task force really do what we're doing, break down these silos, come together and seek solutions and ultimately break it down into some type of recommendation to the elected officials. And I believe the county commissioners that ultimately would take this recommendation, put it into some type of ballot measure that would go in front of the voters. Originally, I was told the timeline was the fall of 2026, that that would be the case. So that's my understanding. I'd look for Dr. Mace's…
MM: Yes, that's what they said at our meeting earlier this month. They said, we will present our proposable final recommendations the end of May to elected officials. And then they were speaking, hopefully, that some of us would continue on to consult if there were any questions, modifications needed, because then you're adding more voices to the pot. There's always going to be some modifications. Well, this won't work and this won't work and discussing funding, because that's the crux. You can dream whatever you want, but who's going to pay for it?
DN: So does it all come down to a ballot measure? Again, you made reference to Measure 1 before, which was, do we build a new jail or do we not? Is that what this is all about, do you think?
CW: I think that was the original mission, but it's much more, I believe, than just the measure. I think there's so much more thought that's gone into the work of what it takes, this puzzle that we've talked about.
I know that we're sort of modeling this off of Whatcom County. They were able to pass a similar measure recently, but I also think we're learning from them that the wheels sort of came off. They passed it, but what happens next and how do we get it across the finish line? And from my understanding, they didn't necessarily keep this type of group, this task force going. And that's why I think it's going to be critical not only to get it to pass the community, but then to make sure there's a group that continues to stay involved with the planning of it, the development of it, the construction of it, and then the execution of it. It has to be, because we got to keep it on track.
I'll go back to what Dr. Mace said. We are in silos. We specialize in the world we operate and work in, but in order to make this work, we got to break those silos down and continue. Last thing I'd want to see is those silos go back up and assume that this thing, hey, we passed it and it's going to come together and work. I don't think that's the case. I think these voices have to continue to stay involved.
DN: You agree with that?
MM: Agree, a million percent. That's the really big understanding of the Safe and Healthy Task Force. This is not a ‘them’ problem. This is an ‘us’ issue. This is my neighbors, my family, my kids, us issue, me. And I need it to pass. I need everybody to be seen as a person who just needs a little help because yesterday was really hard, but today could be better because you reached out and said, I got you, what do you need? Let me show up. And that's what the Safe and Healthy Task Force is in my mind and I'm hopeful. Otherwise, we wouldn't be taking so much time, but I'm really hopeful and I think it's a really good investment.
