BLM groups rally for change in Tri-Cities special police unit
Vanessa Algarin-Benitez is looking for change in how Tri-Cities police investigate officer-involved shootings.
She and about 50 others stood at Canal Drive and Columbia Center Boulevard in Kennewick on Saturday in a protest aimed at abolishing the regional Special Investigations Unit.
The unit includes detectives from Benton, Franklin and Walla Walla counties and is called in to investigate shootings involving police officers and some other deaths. In the past decade, that’s been 42 cases.
In particular, they are looking to see if the officer broke the law.
Two Black Lives Matter groups, Blackformation and Luchardes por Cambio have taken aim at the unit with various Facebook posts.
For Algarin-Benitez, a member of Luchadores por Cambio — Tri-Cities, says the SIU unit still is too close to the police investigating the police.
“We feel there is a lot of bias in that,” she said. “We’re from a small town. I’m sure a lot of officers know each other.”
They are looking for some agency or firm to be brought in from outside the Tri-Cities when someone is wounded or killed by police.
She also doesn’t believe the changes that were put into place earlier this year, which added community representatives is enough. She feels the representatives picked are too limited.
While Saturday’s protest was smaller than the Tri-City demonstrations in the days following George Floyd’s death, she said she believes they are still useful and necessary.
“At this point, we’re just here to raise awareness. To bring awareness to an issue that we see in the community,” she said. “We’re not going to just end here. We’re going to send petitions. We’re going to send this up to authorities who can make these kind of changes.”
But Leo Perales, one of the community members who participated in the investigation of the Gordon Whitaker shooting in Kennewick, disagrees that the SIU unit needs to be dismantled.
“As I noted, SIU can be improved and will be,” he said told the Herald. “We will be seeking corrections to the shortcomings we saw with the Whitaker case, but overall the investigation was transparent and handled professionally by the SIU.”
He wants more separation from the administrative investigation, which determines if the officers followed the department’s policies, and the SIU investigation.
He also believes the unit could do a better job providing updates to family members about the investigation.
“Some agencies aren’t following these changes at all,” Perales said. “Our area has done better than most.”
Saturday’s protest attracted a small counter-protest of five people carrying “thin blue line” American Flags. They stayed silently on the opposite corner. It followed a Back the Blue rally at John Dam Plaza earlier in the day.
This story was originally published September 6, 2020 at 5:00 AM.