Did a Mayor Deny Police Chief Appointment Based on Race?

Did a Mayor Deny Police Chief Appointment Based on Race?

By Steve Pomper 

If you ever wonder if some politicians actually respond to the clarion call to not let a crisis go to waste, you can stop wondering. I recently wrote about a city councilmember of a large American city who, while campaigning for her election, called for hiring 200 additional police officers. She was unequivocal in her appeal. However, after a man died in police custody in a city 2,000 miles away, the city councilmember became a leading voice calling for defunding the police. 

She’s not the only one exploiting a “crisis.” In the beautiful little port city of Edmonds, Washington, Mayor Mike Nelson was similarly afflicted while searching for a new police chief to fill a retirement vacancy. According to Jason Rantz, at MyNorthwest.com, in April 2020, Mayor Nelson wanted to appoint Assistant Chief Jim Lawless as police chief. 

Chief Lawless has 25 years in police work, has a master’s degree, and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Mayor Nelson originally commented about Chief Lawless, “I can’t imagine a person better suited for this job.”

But did he mean it? 

Rantz wrote, “But after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, Nelson got exceptionally woke and embraced the Black Lives Matter movement. At that point, he decided to use the movement to position himself as a white savior singularly focused on protecting people of color from a racist society.”

There was one big problem for Edmonds’ liberal leadership, Chief Lawless is white. 

Mayor Nelson adopted a pro-BLM stance and instantly felt a need to become “woker” than other woke mayors. How dare Chief Lawless be white? Well, he can’t help it. But that doesn’t matter to Mayor Nelson who seems to have no idea that in a pretend attempt to fight “racism,” isn’t he the one being racist? 

So, the virtue-signaling mayor changed his mind about hiring Chief Lawless. Mayor Nelson, along with a majority of the city council appointed Sherman Pruitt as the new police chief. They were looking to solve their problem of whiteness, and Chief Pruitt was their answer. In other words:

There was one big solution for Edmonds’ liberal leadership, Chief Pruitt is black. 

Citing “social justice, and equity…,” MyEdmondsNews reported, Mayor Nelson decided Chief Pruitt was actually who he couldn’t “imagine a person better suited to the job.” This was not only an insult to Chief Lawless, it was probably an even bigger insult to Chief Pruitt, whom Mayor Nelson used as a social justice prop. 

While Pruitt appears to have some legitimate positives in his past, such as serving his country in the Marines, he also has some messy history. These woke, progressive white Edmonds politicians failed to do even the most rudimentary vetting. They didn’t want to know about anything negative, so on go the blinders. 

Apparently, sensing they were wrong to choose one man over another solely because of his skin color, the mayor and council sped through the approval process. The city had not been as thorough in doing a background check as they should have been. Still, according to Rantz, “Nelson implied there were no issues on the city’s end. He was wrong, of course.”

Chief Pruitt was canned after only a week when the city learned he’d kept a few little details out of his application. For one, he failed to disclose a previously failed a background check when applying to the Lake Stevens Police Department.  

With a little digging, the differences in experience and ability between the two candidates become immediately apparent. You read earlier about Chief Lawless’s stellar professional background. As for Chief Pruitt, he’d most recently served as police chief of the tiny Sauk-Suiattle Tribal Police in Darrington, WA. Though this position does not qualify Chief Pruitt to run a significantly larger department, at least it was honest. Omitting other information was not so honest.

He left out that a warrant had been issued for his arrest stemming from a domestic violence investigation. That incident resulted in his wife obtaining a protection order and Pruitt having to complete a 16-week court-ordered DV program. I should note that elements of the DV incident met the Edmonds P.D. requirement as an “automatic disqualifier” to work as a police officer in the city.

And, according to another report at MyEdmondsNews, Pruitt also failed to disclose he was in his probationary period with the Seattle Police Department (SPD), when the DuPont P.D. investigated a report of Pruitt harassing a restaurant manager. Pruitt believed the manager was mistreating his wife who worked there. Following an investigation, the SPD terminated Pruitt’s employment.

Choosing a decent police chief also affects the rank-and-file police officers. After all, he or she is the chief of police. But Mayor Nelson and four members of the Edmonds City Council could not care less about what the officers think about who will lead them. They only care about what other pointy-headed progressives think about how woke they are. 

Mayor Nelson, whom Rantz says is “too terrified to do interviews,” is “pretending the police department isn’t safe.” My wife worked as a firefighter for 25 years for the fire department that included assignments at Edmonds fire stations. Working on duel-response calls with Edmonds P.D. she saw for herself the excellent cops who are professionals. She saw them treat everyone with respect regardless of irrelevant features such as skin color.  

Once Pruitt was dismissed, Mayor Nelson should have offered the position to Chief Lawless, right? He didn’t. Although, I have no idea why Chief Lawless would ever want to serve as chief under that reptilian politician. Rantz encapsulated the issue when he concluded, “Nelson embarrassed his city, he tokenized a Black man, and now, more than ever, he’s tripling down on choosing a person of color because he’s a white man in a position of power!”

As far as Edmonds being a bastion of bias and bigotry, one incident of “racism” in recent history wound up being a hoax. An article I wrote about the hoax appeared at OpsLens in November 2017. So-called hate-crime hoaxes are not rare, as written in the Wall Street Journal. The Edmonds political leadership seemed to salivate at the opportunity to “fight racism” in their city.

One city councilmember wanted to pass legislation outlawing issuing permits to any company “when discriminatory or hateful conduct occurs on their site.” Due process, anyone? The noose at the center of the hoax found hanging at a construction site was placed there by a couple of black student workers from a vocational school.     

Perhaps Edmonds’ politicians would better serve the people of their community by selecting the next police chief based on the man or woman most likely to do the best job. Pick the person who will maintain the high level of public safety the taxpayers deserve. They should not insult their city by choosing a police chief based on the color of his or her skin while, as they apparently did in this case, ignoring the content of his or her character. 

The character of Mayor Mike Nelson, however, is now the subject of scrutiny and an online petition calling for his resignation.