Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer is facing calls to resign after a Seattle Times article exposed an incident where he made an emergency call to 911 saying that someone was trying to kill him. He later retracted that statement. Since that story broke a recording of a 911 Dispatcher suggests that if the Sheriff had given more details, his call would’ve been given lower priority.
On this panel from 2017 Ed Troyer (then in PR for the Sheriff’s Department) attended a panel hosted by Nerd Farmer Podcast Host Nate Bowling. The panel also includes lawyer Shannon McMinimee, Vanessa Hernandez from the ACLU.
The conversation starts about 35 minutes in, Troyer speaks about policing (and how the issue isn’t the KKK or problems plaguing policing nationally but “media issues” and “Mental health”) starting around 40:00.
The discussion goes to different places including policing in schools, mental health, folks with felonies, asset forfeiture, police accountability, and community policing in Tacoma. Little is resolved in the conversation but you definitely get an education about the issues and Ed Troyer’s perspective on them. He does not seem convinced that there is a systemic issue with policing in Tacoma or Pierce County and emphasized the checks and balances that exist in the department.
