PHOTO BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington Tuesday.
BY GAYLA CAWLEY
Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole, a Marblehead High graduate who was invited to sit with Michelle Obama during President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address Tuesday, said the president’s plea for all U.S. citizens to come together to overcome our challenges resonated the most with her.
Coming together to overcome challenges was the fourth theme of Obama’s address Tuesday night and what he called “perhaps the most important thing I want to say tonight.”
“The future we want – opportunity and security for our families, a rising standard of living and a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids – all that is within our reach,” Obama said. “But it will only happen if we work together. It will only happen if we can have rational, constructive debates.”
O’Toole said she was surprised by how general Obama’s speech was, as she expected him to talk about specific issues or challenges. She said she wasn’t disappointed, just surprised.
“I was a bit surprised by that, but I appreciated that his theme of unity and collaboration aligned perfectly with what we’re trying to accomplish in Seattle,” O’Toole said.
O’Toole said in an earlier interview that she was hired as the Seattle Police Chief to take on a reform project in the city, based on a consent decree the city entered into with the U.S. Justice Department, regarding excessive police force and discriminatory policing.
O’Toole said because of their compliance with the consent decree, the Seattle Police Department is now “well down the road to reform” and other police departments are turning to them to learn from their experiences.
O’Toole said bringing people together and representing different perspectives to overcome challenges is precisely what she is doing in Seattle with the police department.
“We’re all Americans,” O’Toole said. “We need to come together and unite.”
Before attending the speech, O’Toole said she met privately with U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch earlier in the day, and spoke to her about progress with police reform in Seattle. She said Lynch cares deeply about policing and “recognizes the need to reform certain aspects of policing.”
Throughout her career, O’Toole has traveled to other countries for work, including a stint as chief general for Ireland’s national police force, and said upon returning to the U.S. each time, she would “come home with a renewed sense of pride and appreciation of what we do have.” She said she also experienced that feeling during Obama’s address.
“It’s also a reminder to me that we do live in this incredible democracy,” O’Toole said.
Prior to the speech, O’Toole said she and other guests were ushered into a room to meet with the president and first lady. She called the two of them “genuine, down to earth people,” and said it never ceases to amaze her when she meets “incredibly powerful people” how much she has in common with them.
“The more we engage, the more we realize we have in common,” O’Toole said.
O’Toole said she’s been “fairly nonchalant” about sitting with Michelle Obama because of how busy she was leading up to that moment. She said she didn’t have time to think about or absorb the excitement. When she was sitting through the State of the Union address, remembering how she would watch the speech every year since college, never imagining that she’d be sitting in the First Lady’s box, she said that’s when the realization hit her.
“It was an incredible honor,” O’Toole said. “It was an honor to represent so many great people that I’m working with. It was definitely once in a lifetime. I can’t imagine that I’ll be back there.”
Gayla Cawley can be reached at [email protected].
