Will Washington’s Police Accountability Measure Work?

FEATURING FRANK HOPPER - A police reform initiative in Washington to hold law enforcement accountable is facing a test of its effectiveness. Initiative 940, the first of its kind in the nation, strips police of so-called qualified immunity. 

In 2018, Washington state voters passed 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 police killed a Black man named Manuel Ellis, weeks before George Floyd’s similar police murder in Minnesota, Initiative 940 was put to the test.