The City of Bellingham Police Department, more commonly known as the Bellingham Police Department and its initials BPD, is the primary

law enforcement Law enforcement is the activity of some members of government who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by discovering, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules and norms governing that society. The term en ...

and investigation agency within the

Bellingham, Washington Bellingham ( ) is the most populous city in, and county seat of Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It lies south of the U.S.–Canada border in between two major cities of the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver, British Columbia (locat ...

city limits. Bellingham Police Department is the largest Police Department within

Whatcom County, Washington Whatcom County is a county located in the northwestern corner of the U.S. state of Washington, bordered by the Canadian Lower Mainland (the Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley Regional Districts of British Columbia) to the north, Okanogan Coun ...

and any other municipal agency north of

King County, Washington King County is located in the U.S. state of Washington. The population was 2,269,675 in the 2020 census, making it the most populous county in Washington, and the 13th-most populous in the United States. The county seat is Seattle, also the st ...

. Bellingham Police Department is nationally accredited by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.

History

On January 12, 1979, Bellingham Police arrested the prolific

Hillside Strangler The Hillside Strangler, later the Hillside Stranglers, is the media epithet for one, later discovered to be two, American serial killers who terrorized Los Angeles, California, between October 1977 and February 1978, with the nicknames originating ...

in Bellingham. Chief Terry Mangan was among the officers on the case: he would later serve as chief of the

Spokane Police Department The Spokane Police Department is the agency responsible for law enforcement in Spokane, Washington Spokane ( ) is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane Ri ...

and work for the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...

. In 2002, a Jamaican woman named Una James came to Bellingham to search for her son,

Lee Boyd Malvo Lee Boyd Malvo (born February 18, 1985), also known as John Lee Malvo, is a convicted murderer who, along with John Allen Muhammad, committed a series of murders dubbed the D.C. sniper attacks over a three-week period in October 2002. Malvo was a ...

, who had fallen under the influence of

John Allen Muhammad John Allen Muhammad (born Williams; December 31, 1960 – November 10, 2009) was an American convicted murderer from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He, along with his partner and accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo (aged 17), a native of Kingston, Jamaic ...

. Bellingham Police alerted immigration authorities to James's presence; she and Malvo were arrested. Malvo and Muhammad would commit the

Beltway sniper attacks The D.C. sniper attacks (also known as the Beltway sniper attacks) were a series of coordinated shootings that occurred during three weeks in October 2002 throughout the Washington metropolitan area, consisting of the District of Columbia, Mary ...

later that year. An area immigration attorney commented that an immigrant going to the police for help and being arrested instead was common; the ''

Seattle Post-Intelligencer The ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'' (popularly known as the ''Seattle P-I'', the ''Post-Intelligencer'', or simply the ''P-I'') is an online newspaper and former print newspaper based in Seattle, Washington, United States. The newspaper was foun ...

'' noted that the arrest may have served to separate James and Malvo and draw Malvo closer to Muhammad. In 2008 a Bellingham Police car was stolen when an officer left it running in a parking lot while responding to a call. The car was found a half hour later with two flat tires and missing its radio microphones. In 2013, Bellingham Police attempted to break up a 500-person riot near

Western Washington University Western Washington University (WWU or Western) is a public university in Bellingham, Washington. The northernmost university in the contiguous United States, WWU was founded in 1893 as the state-funded New Whatcom Normal School, succeeding a pri ...

after students began throwing beer bottles and other objects at idling police cars. Police used

riot gear Riot control measures are used by law enforcement, military, paramilitary or security forces to control, disperse, and arrest people who are involved in a riot, unlawful demonstration or unlawful protest. If a riot is spontaneous and irration ...

pepper ball A pepper-spray projectile, also called a pepper-spray ball, pepper-ball, pepper bomb, or pepper-spray pellet is a Frangibility, frangible projectile containing a powdered chemical that irritates the eyes and nose in a manner similar to pepper spr ...

smoke Smoke is a suspension of airborne particulates and gases emitted when a material undergoes combustion or pyrolysis, together with the quantity of air that is entrained or otherwise mixed into the mass. It is commonly an unwanted by-product ...

and

flash grenade A stun grenade, also known as a flash grenade, flashbang, thunderflash, or sound bomb, is a less-lethal explosive device used to temporarily disorient an enemy's senses. Upon detonation, they produce a blinding flash of light and an extremely lou ...

s. It remains unclear what started the riot. In May 2016, Bellingham Police became an acknowledged National accredited law enforcement agency by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC) In May 2017, a Bellingham officer fatally shot a man after he charged the officer with a knife. The man was a suspect in a stabbing the previous year. In 2017, Officer Brooks Laughlin assaulted a man during a traffic stop. Laughlin was arrested twice in 2018 before he resigned from the force in April. In November 2018 he was convicted of three counts of second-degree assault, two counts of felony harassment, two counts of violating a no-contact order, one count of felony stalking and one count of fourth-degree assault. Court papers state that he was the third Bellingham police officer in three years to be arrested for assault. An initiative on the November 2021 ballot banned the Bellingham Police Depeartment, and the rest of the Bellingham city government, from the use of facial recognition and

predictive policing Predictive policing is the usage of mathematics, predictive analytics, and other analytical techniques in law enforcement to identify potential criminal activity. A report published by the RAND Corporation identified four general categories pred ...

technology.

References

External links

Bellingham Police DepartmentBPD's listing at Officer Down Memorial Page.
{{Authority control Municipal police departments of Washington (state)