Will Washington’s Police Accountability Measure Work?
A police accountability initiative in the state of Washington is facing a test of its effectiveness. , the first of its kind in the nation, strips law enforcement of “,” which encompass the legal protections from prosecution that police officers enjoy.
In 2018, Washington state voters the initiative after members of the Puyallup Tribe mobilized in the wake of the police killing of a young Indigenous woman named Jacqueline Salyers.
Two years later, when Tacoma police killed a Black man named , a few months before ’s similar murder by police in Minnesota, Initiative 940 was put to the test.
Frank Hopper, Tlingit, recently authored a story for YES! about how the Puyallup Tribe and their allies passed Initiative 940. He spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about his latest story and whether Initiative 940 has been effective.
Sonali Kolhatkar
joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Ƶ Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 of the same name.
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