Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 4030 AMERICAN POLICE BEAT: MARCH 2017 P olicing is many a splendid thing. For instance, a lot of law enforcement agen- cies have recruit- ment ads on YouTube that look like Bad Boys 2 or other Hollywood action movies. And while there’s no ques- tion that “runnin’ and gunnin” is a part of the job, people that understand policing through the lens of Hollywood fre- quently think that’s all there is to it. And not many people would likely consider helping inmates become productive members of society “police work” per se. But Seattle Police Detective Kim Bogucki might disagree. Bogucki was recently fea- tured in a documentary at the Brooklyn Film Festival. The dedicated cop started a creative writing program with female inmates at the Wash- ington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor. Bogucki asks the prisoners to consider one hell of a deep question before they pick up the pen. “If there was something someone could have said or done that would have changed the path that led you here, what would it have been?” The documentary follows four inmates who worked with Bogucki over seven years. In an interview with The Marshall Project, Bogucki explained that the original idea has turned into a much broader effort. Here are excerpts of that interview. MP: Why do spend so much of your time working with inmates? Det. Bogucki: I think being on the police department for 28 years, I’ve done a lot of arresting and have written a lot of tickets. But about 15 or 16 years ago, I started doing outreach work, mostly with the younger homeless population in Seattle, trying to figure out why kids were making the choices that they were making. And it’s then that I realized that I didn’t know a whole lot about some of the populations that were really marginalized which I was serving. MP: What can cops learn from spending time with in- mates and recently released felons? Det. Bogucki: You would be hard pressed to find a police officer that at some point in their career doesn’t look in the back of their car and wonder what happened to the person that’s in the backseat. This project gives that officer some answers and maybe changes the way they look at doing police work. The bottom line is every- body, even people that we arrest, are still human beings. Mental health and chemi- cal dependence are two big reasons behind many arrests. We don’t do a good job in this country addressing these issues. MP: It seems that your so- lution for repairing frayed police-community relations would be to enroll more cops as mentors for inmates and ex-offenders. Is mentoring that effective? Det. Bogucki: You have to understand in police work, it’s day in and day out, seeing people at their worst — pe- riod. This project has shown folks in my profession that some people can actually change. We need to look at the person not as a felon, and try and figure out what we as police officers can do to keep people out of prison. Mentoring is ef- fective, whether it’s traditional or random. Police are in a unique position to mentor on a daily basis and many do probably without realizing it. MP: You are going to Brook- lyn on Sunday to watch your work on the big screen. How do you expect your life to change as the documentary makes the rounds of film fes- tivals? Det. Bogucki: I’m hoping that as we get more national attention, that we’ll actu- ally be able to facilitate more dialogue with people about incarceration. To bring people to the table that have been locked up and include them in this, they have some of the best insight to this problem and solution. Even if it’s allowing people to start looking at inmates as human beings and not animals, that would be a great start. Kathlyn does a great job in the film capturing a part of incarceration and reentry that I have yet to see. We hope that by using the voices from the inside we can make changes on the outside. “America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.” – George W. Bush Det. Bogucki’s star on rise I n Texas, one of Mesquite Chief Charles Cato’s first moves was to give his officers more freedom in terms of their appearance on the job. In other words, “Yup. Y’all can wear the cowboy hats!” Now the vast majority of the Dallas suburb’s 220 officers are wearing cow- boy hats. There was some talk about making the hats mandatory, (paid for by the city at $46 apiece), but there are still some officers who don’t wear the black straw Resistol hats. “This cowboy hat is a ben- efit the police officers asked for, and I am grateful the City of Mesquite was able to provide it,” Chief Cato said. In Texas, hats are in the contract Seattle Police Detective Kim Bogucki.