Olympia committee recommends two appointments for the Police Use of Force Board

The Olympia City Council is slated to approve the appointments of two candidates to fill vacancies on the Police Use of Force Events Board on Tuesday, October 18.

After two years of recruiting, the city’s Community Livability and Public Safety Committee has recommended the appointment of Adan Espino Jr. and Sarah Nagy to serve as community representatives on the board.

The Police Use of Force Events Board was created in response to the Law Enforcement and Community Safety Act, also known as Initiative Measure 940.

Community representatives will monitor and lend transparency to the investigative process of a police use-of-deadly-force incident.

Appointees

Sarah Nagy is a lawyer by profession.

In the application form submitted to the Olympia Boards and Commissions in August 2020, Nagy discussed her experience as an attorney representing incarcerated people. She said many were justice-involved victims of crimes and survivors of other traumatic experiences.

"My work has sometimes required me to learn intimate details about people's experiences of crisis or violence. It is work I have had practice processing and coping with and that I am ready to take on in the context of this committee," Nagy stated, adding that her work is grounded on principles of racial equity.

Nagy moved to Olympia with her wife in 2017. Since then, she has volunteered with Thurston County Volunteer Legal Services on housing law and other civil cases.

Nagy obtained her Juris Doctor degree at Loyola University Chicago School of Law in Chicago, Illinois, in May 2017.

Adan Espino Jr. has been living in Olympia since he was 15. He attended Olympia High School and South Puget Sound Community College, obtaining an Associate of Arts degree in Political Science in 2017.

He has also attended the University of Washington Tacoma and obtained a degree in Law & Police, minor in Economics in 2019.

Espino submitted his application to the Olympia Boards and Commission in 2020, but only in September this year that the committee members were able to interview him.

Espino claimed to be proficient at analyzing, researching, and compiling reports on politics, economics, public policy, and law and effective at communicating the complexities of these subjects to various audiences.

Espino added that his strong public policy and law background and ability to think critically about what the community might feel would make him an effective community representative to the independent investigation team.