Spokane's Human Rights Commission has requested the Spokane Police Department do more to inform the public on the military-grade equipment it buys.

In a letter dated Monday, Blaine Stum, chairman of the five-member city commission tasked with battling "unjust discrimination" in the community, asks Spokane Police Chief Frank Straub to open up about weapons, gear and vehicles ordered in part through a federal grant program that has gained increased scrutiny since the response to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager.

"While we understand the need not to publicly advertise the equipment and weapons available for their use in protecting the community, we recommend that the Spokane Police Department be more transparent in providing information" on military gear ordered, Stum writes on behalf of his group.

The letter from the Human Rights Commission can be read in its entirety here. For more of the group's recommendations, go inside the blog.

Public records show that the Spokane Police Department has made just one purchase through the 1033 program: an armored truck that police say is used to provide mobile cover during a standoff situation. Meanwhile, the Spokane County Sheriff's Office has bought rifles, sights, helmets, trucks and even a helicopter through the program, which provides Department of Defense surplus equipment at fire-sale rates.

City officials said in August they were concerned about "mission creep" with the military equipment available to law enforcement.

The Human Rights Commission did not stop at the department's equipment. It also suggested a re-evaluation of the way threats are evaluated before launching a SWAT (now referred to as the Emergency Response Unit) response and recording the race of a suspect who prompts a SWAT response. Included with the letter are maps of the City of Spokane, by census track, and how many black and Hispanic residents live there with an overlay of the SWAT responses during the past several years.

Investigators conduct a risk assessment before deciding whether a subject warrants a SWAT response. Of the factors to be considered is whether the suspect has a history of mental illness, a category Stum and the commission say stigmatizes those diagnosed with disorders and unfairly biases them for a SWAT response.

While the Spokane Police Department does not identify the race of a suspect in a field report about each SWAT response, the Spokane County Sheriff's Office does. That allowed the American Civil Liberties Union to include the Sheriff's Office in its list of agencies with an apparent racial discrepancy (pg. 36) in the likelihood of warranting a SWAT response. Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich has dismissed claims the office unfairly targets minorities in SWAT responses, and the ACLU's numbers are based on population rates.

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