Kirkland Will Have New 'Unwanted Subject' 911 Call Policy

KIRKLAND, WA - Kirkland police have finished an investigation into the November Menchie's incident where officers asked a black man to leave the frozen yogurt shop because he looked "suspicious." The officers did not violate policy that day, according to a city press release, but police will change the way they handle the type of 911 call that incited the incident.

According to the new policy, police will now "always make efforts to determine the facts of a situation before they initiate any actions to remove an individual from a premises, and to make efforts to overcome misunderstandings whenever possible" when dealing with an "unwanted subject" 911 call.

Earlier this week, Patch published a report detailing all the "unwanted subject" calls made in Kirkland in 2018. City records show that about 14 percent of such calls in Kirkland involved black people, even though just over 1 percent of the city's population is black.

Asked about 911 call policy changes in mid-December, Kirkland Lt. Rob Saloum told Patch, "It's a little early for policy changes."

Read: What 911 Calls Say About Racial Bias In Puget Sound

In early November, Byron Ragland was at the Totem Lake Menchie's working, supervising a visit between a mother and her son. The store's owner, Ramon Cruz, called 911 to report Ragland because he was making the employees nervous.

Kirkland officers went to the store and asked Ragland to leave, which he did. The incident mirrored countless other instances of racial profiling, like when two black men were kicked out of a Starbucks in Philadelphia last spring. They were there waiting to meet someone for a business meeting.

According to a press release, the new 911 policy will require officers to:

• Find out if the owner/employee has asked the person to leave.
• Encourage owners/employees to communicate, either in-person or through signage, why the unwanted person is being asked to leave.
• In cases where this does not work, officers should attempt to mediate the conversation and determine if there is a valid reason for this person to be asked to leave.

"We believe that by improving our systems we can significantly reduce the possibility that misunderstandings, such as the one that occurred at Menchie’s, occur again," Kirkland Chief Cherie Harris said in a press release.

Caption: Byron Ragland, second right, talks with Kirkland police Sgt. Eric Karp as Gerald Hankerson, left, president of the Seattle King County NAACP, looks on near a frozen-yogurt shop that Ragland was kicked out of. The police department there has apologized for an incident in which officers helped the owner of the Menchie's shop expel Ragland, an African-American man, from the business because employees said they felt uncomfortable. The Seattle Times reported that the shop's owner called police on Nov. 7 about Ragland, who works as a court-appointed special advocate, who was in the shop supervising a court-sanctioned outing between a mother and her son.

AP Photo/Elaine Thompson