A Map of Police Misconduct

View 2009 April US Police Misconduct Reports in a larger map
UPDATE: Unfortunately, Google maps can only handle 200 entries per map, and since there are over 490 stories so far this month, I can't make an interactive map of police misconduct stories... I'll keep looking into it, but for the people who wanted to see this come out, I'm sorry.

I'm thinking of creating an interactive map of police misconduct cases in the US each month, but it's a gigantic pain in the butt and will take a lot of my time...

(Time is something which I barely have already between the working 2 jobs, taking care of family, this site, and the news feed... sleep and food happens every now and then too.)

So, the question is, does anyone think they would find this useful?

If so, does anyone know of an easy way to make a Google map like this?

Thanks!

NOTE: The above map is just a work-in-progress, it's not even close to being completed with close to 500 entries for this month alone pending so far.

From The Twitter Files - The Oddball Cops of April

As the end of April draws near I'm getting ready to compile the statistics from the first month of the national police misconduct tracking project.

In case you didn't know, that project, of which the National Police Misconduct News Feed on Twitter is but a by-product, is an attempt to gather statistics on the extent and types of police misconduct in the US, as well as localities where misconduct may be more prevalent than others.

As I compile these stories of police misconduct, I keep thinking about posting up the worst of them each week or so... but so many of them are so horrific to me that the lists each week would be too long for a mere blog post.

So, instead, I've decided to post a brief list of the weirdest stories I've seen this month and post them for your review.

I think that cop just gave you the finger, kid
A Tolleson Arizona police officer assigned to a local elementary school, where the grade-school kids are apparently so dangerous that he needed to cary his gun around, appears to have accidentally shot his own finger off while standing in the school doorway.


At the time there was no reported need for the officer to be, erm, fingering his weapon, and there was no word in the report on whether or not there were any small children nearby at the time. But the officer was last reported to be in the hospital while his department looks into the incident.

This cop certainly deserves the finger though!
Ever here that lame urban myth about police officers who were so corrupt that they would charge victims of police brutality with assaulting the cops fists with their faces?

Well, in Albany New York, they seem to delight in turning nightmarish myths into reality now that the Albany police department has charged a man with felony assault... are you ready for it?

...because an officer broke his finger while punching him in the face.

What does it take to be a police chief these days?
Well, for the city of Columbus New Mexico, apparently, it takes a bit of criminal experience. Apparently, after sifting through resumes of potential candidates, the city of Columbus New Mexico picked an interim police chief who might have intimate knowledge of the criminal mind.

To be precise, their new chief comes with a value-added criminal record that includes indictments for extortion in 1996 and allegations of stalking and harassment in 2001. If that's the kind of person they want leading their police, I hate to see the requirements for the officers that will serve under him.

Can you say "backfired"?
Philadelphia's police union was furious when a judge ordered a picture they put up of a recently killed officer because it gave the appearance of bias in his courtroom when the officer's accused killer was scheduled to appear.

So, the union has been demanding that he be fired and have even gone so far as to illegally remove his parking sign from the court parking lot in retribution. But, citizens don't appear to agree with the police union's sentiment that the judge offended everyone in the world by trying to keep the court impartial and have held protests in support of their besieged judge.

Speaking of unions...

Teamsters vs Police
No, this isn't a story of cops busting up union picket lines like back in the old days. This time, it was the story of the Teamsters and the Fraternal Order of Police who were in a pitched battle to represent Nashville TN police officers.

One enterprising Nashville Tennessee cop and Teamster's union representative was caught breaking into the rival union's camp for underprivileged children and installing cameras in an attempt to discredit the FOP in 2007.

Now he's facing 10 months in prison and a Shelby County deputy will be joining him for pleading to perjury in connection with the case.

Buy that cop a leash?
A Pittsburgh Pennsylvania police sergeant cost city $500,000 in a settlement against the city over an incident where the officer had choked a fellow officer last year. Now, you might think that, well, maybe the cop was told not to do that sort of thing again, or maybe disciplined, fired, or even prosecuted?

Nope... and now Sgt. Chokey McChoker been accused of choking yet another cop in new lawsuit against the city. If that's what this Sgt does to coworkers and subordinates, I sure hate to see what this cop does to citizens.

Will it really be that big of a surprise, Surprise?
The city of Surprise Arizona recently fired two of it's police officers but has remained very tight lipped about exactly why the two officers were fired. Of course, whenever there's a secret like that, the press gets interested. So, the local paper sued after the city denied a FOIA request for the disciplinary reports.

The police department and city officials have given a very odd reason for their refusal in that they say the reports will cause a "chilling reaction in the community's trust in their police department"... and the judge isn't buying it and has ordered the city to be a bit more precise about exactly why this case, while not associated with any known criminal charges, will chill the hot Arizona city to the bone.

The Peter Police Principle?
A Reno Nevada police detective who ran a program that travelled around different schools to warn teens about the dangers of drinking & driving was recently arrested... yep, you guessed it, for driving while under the influence.

Petered again?
A Manitowoc Wisconsin police officer who worked in the notorious anti-drug D.A.R.E program was convicted for, you guessed it again, being involved in an accident while under the influence. The chief won't disclose that officer's discipline, but we know it's not a dismissal.

A forfeiture fit...
Auditors recently began to question why a Minneapolis/St. Paul Minnesota joint gang taskforce used $16,000 of funds obtained by forfeiture in various drug raids to fund a "working vaction" trip to Hawaii. So, what did they do in response?

...fit to be tied?
They apparently held a secret, and quite illegal, meeting to discuss ways they could spin the story when they found out the local paper was getting ready to print a story about the whole scandal. I guess they decided to go for double or nothing.

Is sharing really caring?
Culpeper Virginia police officers sure love to share... in fact, after arresting a young man for a DUI, officers decided to look through the suspect's cell phone and found pictures of his girlfriend in the nude.

The officers called all their pals in the department to come take a look... and agreed they were so interesting they even called out over the radio and invited officers from other departments to come see.

Now those brilliant officers are faced with a lawsuit seeking $350,000 in damages which may jump now that the plaintiff's lawyers have discovered evidence that the images were distributed outside of the department.

Raising Arizona Florida -or- Chips Ahoy?

Deputy Chip's Crew

The wife of sheriff's Deputy Charles “Chip” Buckner III apparently thought it would be a lark to take his police cruiser out on the town with her mom and a 19 year old, um, friend.

Well, after swerving all over, and then pulling a u-turn in front of another cop, they got pulled over and arrested... for a lot more than just a joy ride.

It appears that Gail Buckner, the deputy's wife, was a felon and so was the 19 year old guy she and her mom were with. So, in addition to grand theft they also got busted for impersonation, felon in possession of a firearm, and firearm theft.

The hubby deputy has since resigned while the sheriff's department looks into how the whole debacle came about.

Seattle's Civilian Police Oversight System Gets New Auditor

On April 10th, the Seattle Police Department's civilian oversight system auditor's contract expired. That auditor, Katrina Pflaumer, was the first auditor for our current system, called the Office of Professional Accountability, or OPA, and appeared to do a pretty good job at being auditor from what little we can tell through the very secretive system we have in place.

What always impressed me were that her reports were always packed with very useful information. Often times there would be no way to tell what OPA finding applied to which case in the OPA's monthly reports until the bi-annual auditor reports came out and cited some of those cases as examples of problems seen within the current system.

In that aspect alone it seems that the auditor's position is the most important within that system since it is the only one that actually gives the system at least a small semblance of transparency.

Ten days after Pflaumer's term expired, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced the appointment of a new auditor for the Seattle Police Department on Monday, April 20th.

That auditor, Michael Spearman, served as a King County Superior Court judge from 1993 through 2007 and before that he was a public defender with The Defender Association.

Currently he's been employed as a mediator with Judicial Dispute Resolution LLC where he's been involved with mediating and acting as an arbitrator in personal injury and family law cases.

Additionally, he's mediated complaints against the Seattle Police Department from citizens through the OPA's mediation program for people who filed complaints against officers in minor misconduct cases.

From most accounts he's generally considered fair and has a reputation for being quite dedicated to the impartiality that's required of a judge despite his past history on the defense side of criminal law.

For those unfamiliar with Seattle's civilian police oversight system, the Office of Professional Accountability or OPA, is made of three parts:

OPA Director - provides general oversight of the OPA. Responsible for reviewing and certifying finalized investigations performed by the OPA, which is staffed entirely by Seattle Police officers, and providing recommendations on findings and disciplines, but the chief has final say in how officers are disciplined and can overturn her findings.

The current director has been a staunch supporter of the SPD, it's officers, and the current OPA process, but is otherwise rarely heard from.

OPA Review Board - The OPARB consists of seven members who are basically limited to review of general statistics on OPA results and heavily redacted files from completed investigations in order to make general recommendations to council and the mayor.

Recent changes to the OPARB has limited it to nothing more than a public relations role after the last board became highly critical of the OPA process and were censored as a result. All previous members have been replaced since then.

OPA Auditor - The auditor is responsible for reviewing investigations as the occur as well as review of finalized investigations in order to provide feedback on any problems with the process and on any specific issues with ongoing investigations to improve the process.

The auditor does not have any real say in determination of findings or recommendations for disciplinary action, but has access to all information available to an investigation, unlike the OPARB, and can make recommendations or annotate investigations as they occur.

The auditor also releases reports to the public twice a year, which is probably the only real informative information released by the OPA so far.

For all intent and purposes, I don't see any problems with this appointment, though I also think that even the best auditor in the world would still be limited by the system in which that person is placed, and the OPA system is incredibly limiting since any changes to that system must be approved by the police union in their contract.

When I asked former judge Spearman about the nomination and what his plans are for his term as OPA Auditor, he was gracious enough to reply, which is alot further than I've gotten with any other member of the OPA, even the OPARB which are supposed to do outreach. So that's a good sign right at the start of his term.

Here's what Spearman had to say about the new challenge he's about to face...

You've asked a number of questions that it is too early for me to give a good answer. I need to make myself more familiar with Ms. Pflaumer's approach to the position before I can really say what I might do differently than her.

I also would like a chance to meet with and talk to Ms. Pflaumer, the members of the review board, members of the community at large, the SPD Guild and get a good sense of the bigger picture beyond retrospectively addressing allegations of police misconduct.

However, I do think that the idea of being pro-active and taking steps to prevent instances of misconduct is a good one that is well within the scope of the auditor's charge.

Initially my biggest challenge will be to assimilate the data that has been collected by the OPA Review Board and the input that has been provided by the community and the guild, which I understand is substantial.

I do think my experience as a judge will be helpful in the position of auditor since I have often had to weigh the practices of law enforcement against the rights guaranteed by our state and federal constitutions. I also have considerable experience in criminal law as both a former judge and a former public defender.

In any case, I certainly wish judge Spearman the best of luck in this new position and I hope that he continues the the same practices of transparency and honest effort that the previous auditor appeared to put forward as the only clear, but small, window that we have into the police department's secretive and opaque disciplinary process.

Reader Poll: What Type of Police Misconduct Will Be Most Reported This Month?

There's a new poll up. I wanted to see what readers thought would be the most common police misconduct problem for this, the first month, of our national police misconduct tracking project.

But, before you vote, some explanation...
First, the options listed are among the top ten most reported types of police misconduct so far this month, so you already have a 1 in 10 chance of getting it right.

Second, let me explain what the terms mean:
Assault - Physical violence that occurs while off-duty.
Brutality - The use of excessive physical force while on-duty.
Color of Law - The misuse or abuse of one's position of authority, such as false arrest, selective enforcement, or intimidating witnesses.
Domestic Violence - Assaults occurring against someone in a relationship with the officer.
Drug Abuse/Dealing - The abuse of or distribution of drugs or providing illegal assistance to those who do either.
DUI - Driving while under the influence, on-duty or off.
Racism/Discrimination - Applying prejudicial bias in the performance of duty, such as the use of racial profiling, use of racial slurs, homophobia, or discriminatory practices within a department.
Sexual Assault - This includes rape, groping, stalking for sexual purposes, and child molestation.
Shootings - On or off-duty use of a firearm against policy or while committing a criminal offense.
Theft/Fraud - Self-explanatory, the act of theft or fraud from businesses, individuals, or police organizations.

Lastly, the poll criteria is culled from this month's ongoing National Police Misconduct News Feed on Twitter, the poll ends on the 30th, soon after that I hope to have the stats compiled from the first month of this project and you can see how you did.

To Speak Ill Of The Dead Says Something Of The Living

As I progress through the police misconduct tracking project and review each day’s stories of police misconduct, one of the many things I think about as I enter each dismal story of police misconduct that occurs across the US into Twitter and into my tracking database is; “which one of these stories might grow legs and go national this time?”

It’s a difficult thing to figure out, after all, since each story is deserving of equally broad attention to me. Whether it’s a story about several officers being arrested on allegations of raping prostitutes, some of them children, in Memphis or a story about thousands of cases falling into question or being dropped because of multiple allegations against officers of lying on warrant applications for drug raids in St. Louis... all of these stories need to be heard and all of their victims are equally deserving of a loud voice.

When a story of police misconduct does hit the national mainstream media though, I try to figure out what it is about that story that sparked broad interest out of the multitudes of stories put out each day across the US. I do this because it helps me figure out just what the public is willing to hear and what they believe about the issue of police misconduct.

The latest story going national appears to be the story about an Erie Pennsylvania police officer who decided it would be great for laughs at a local bar to denigrate the dead, speak ill of those who mourned that homicide victim, and jest about tasering and clubbing suspects… and who didn’t think it was a problem until the video of his performance ended up on YouTube.

So concerned was he, that he and a fellow officer, the officer put in charge of the investigation into his performance on that video, went down to the workplace of the videographer’s relative to threaten him into a state of crying hysterics, saying if he didn’t do everything he could to make that video go away that there would be consequences for his relative.

Incidentally, it’s also interesting to me why the video itself is still getting all the national interest while the backstory of the subsequent efforts by the police to investigate and punish the person who took the video instead of investigating and disciplining the officer shown on the video.

Most curious to me, though, was why a story about an officer's words, his state of mind, would capture attention more than an officer's actual harmful acts of misconduct? After giving the matter some thought, I think I’ve happened upon an answer.

The video shows what we’ve only guessed at so far in the way it gave us a startling glimpse at how some police officers really think. It affirmed our inner-most fears about the police in this nation, that many really do consider everyone who isn’t a fellow law enforcement brother as an enemy, whether that person is a victim, an innocent bystander, or a suspect… It gave us notice that, to many of them, we are all the same to them and worthy of the same amount of respect, which is very little going by how he talked about the shooting victim and his grieving mother.

It made people pause, I think, to consider that… if this is the way this officer held a shooting victim and his mother in his regard, how might this affect how he treated others throughout his career? After all, if he considers the loss of a life and the grief of a mother in such disregard, how then does he treat the living?

More than this, I think, it makes people wonder how many officers like this might be working for their local police department and how many times their own city’s police officers might have spoken ill about their family or friends who have died or have been victimized in some way... or how they will treat them when they are suffering or how they will be described as they slowly die and officers stand around to watch.

I think that, perhaps, this video gives us the most startling, and frank, insight into the “Us vs Them” mentality many police officers have towards the general public to date… and I suppose that I shouldn’t be shocked that this glimpse was so disturbing as to merit national attention, especially since so many are still so ignorant of that mentality and the capacity for abuse that it nurtures.

Beyond this, though, are his actions after his public commentary in a public place went more public than he anticipated. His attempt to bully and threaten the family of the man who took the video was merely an effort to save his own job, in his own words in fact… which goes to show that not only does he hold others in such low regard as to mock their suffering, but that he holds others in such low regard that his job is more important than their rights and freedom.

So, why did the video make more headlines than the police response to that video? Maybe it's because both of the stories together would be too large a glimpse into an officer’s disturbing psyche when it seems that even this small picture into the mind of a problematic cop in a short video clip may already be too much for the public to stomach.

From the E-Mail Bag

I received this last night from the local chapter of the October 22nd Coalition. Apparently they, along with the Tacoma chapter of the National Action Network and Revolution Books, are holding a meeting at Uptown Espresso in Belltown at 4pm on Saturday about the Malika Calhoun incident.

They've requested that the flier be posted and redistributed... It's available in PDF format here.

NOTE: this site is not affiliated with any of the groups sponsoring this event nor is it involved with the event in question.

Site Note

Sorry for the light posting lately, I've not been feeling well... hopefully things will be back up to speed shortly.

Thanks for sticking with us!

Some Days I Get Grief From Both Sides

I received a rather angry email from an, apparently, new reader the other day… I won’t reveal the whole message since I didn’t get permission to publish the person’s story… but it ended on this note:

“Either way [assuming that you are NOT the police running a fake website], we're fucked.”

So… I thought it would be a good idea to, again, clarify:

This site here, http://injusticeinseattle.blogspot.com and the www.injusticeinseattle.org domain I purchased are not run by police officers and I am not, nor have I ever been, a police officer.

However, this site: www.injusticeinseattle.com (pictured at top) is run by police officers in some sort of undetermined attempt to confuse people looking for this site and coax them into submitting their personal information for unknown purposes.

Now, whether you believe me or not, well… that’s up to you I suppose.

Either way, I hope none of you have submitted your information to that site. Because I have no clue how it would be used or where it would end up.

Thank you for your time, and be careful out there on the interwebs!

(NOTE: the fake site was previously noted here and here)

Injustice In Seattle Twitter Project Update

-Updated 9:17 04/14/09
Thought I would give everyone a quick update on the Twitter NewsFeed project.

If you didn't know, I'm using Twitter as a means to aggregate all news stories about police misconduct in order to have a handy reference to compile statistics on just how much police misconduct occurs in the US, where it occurs most often, and what types of police misconduct are most prevalent.

As a byproduct of this effort, you can follow our National Police Misconduct NewsFeed Twitter @Injust_Seattle in order to see how many stories about police misconduct are reported across the US each day... and the number of stories each day are much more than even I expected.

Before I give a peek at what numbers I've gathered so far this month, I want to thank some of the people who have been really supportive of this effort, they've given me the encouragement that helps me keep it going even though it's a lot of work each day.

Radley Balko at The Agitator was the first to actually mention the feed, that meant a lot, always a fan of his great work, thanks! A big thanks to Carlos Miller over at Photography Is Not A Crime for using the feed on his site, I didn't think that other sites would try to use it that way, what a great idea! Also, thanks to TJICistan for suggesting that people can get the feed via RSS if they don't like using Twitter.

On the legal side,Scott at Simple Justice gave it a big vote of confidence and this was seconded by Rick Horowitz at Fresno Criminal Defense! I really can't say how much support I've gotten from the criminal defense legal community, it's been overwhelming.

But, a big surprise, I even got some rare local votes of confidence for once! @WAKX who works at KBCS gave it some Twitter support and Lee over at HorsesAss even had something nice to say about the site and the Twitter Feed!!! Thanks guys!!!

(if I forgot anyone, I'm sorry, just remind me and I'll give you a shout out, I've been overwhelmed with all the support this effort has gotten, I'm very appreciative of it, it means a lot!)

So, this is what April is shaping up so far as the statistics are concerned... Each of these are individual and unique cases, duplicates and updates of original stories have been removed from the stats, so these are each stories that came out during the first 11 days of April:

In the first 11 days of April, 2009:
195 Cases were reported in the news.
146 Individual officers were convicted, arrested, charged, jailed, accused of, or sued for misconduct.
16 Different Police Chiefs were convicted, arrested, charged, jailed, accused of, or sued for misconduct.

That boils down to:
17.72 cases of misconduct reported in the news each day.
532 cases would be reported in the month of April if the trend continues.
6468 cases per year would be reported if the average holds...

Which would mean that there is a reported act of police misconduct every 81 minutes in the USA if the average is sustained.

Of the cases reported, the most common types of misconduct were:
1. 36 were reports of police brutality
2. 18 were reports of domestic violence
3. 17 were reports of criminal sex acts such as rape and child molestation
4. 12 were officer involved shooting incidents
5. 12 were cases of false arrest, wrongful detention, or wrongful deportation

The worst states for police misconduct in the first 11 days of April and number of cases in each:
1. Illinois with 16 cases
2. Pennsylvania with 15 cases.
3. Texas with 15 cases.
4. New York with 14 cases.
5. Florida with 13 cases.
(Washington state had 5 cases)

The worst cities for police misconduct in the beginning of April were:
1. Chicago - 8
2. Dallas - 5
3. Philadelphia - 5
4. Minneapolis - 4
5. Denver - 4
(Seattle had 2 cases)

I'll have more statistics after the end of the month and that will be followed up each month with up-to-date tallies. I'm hoping to do more with it, but it's been a lot of work so far so I'll need to find some better ways to compile the information I collect before I do anything like detail officer names or anything like that.

So, stay tuned, and let me know what you think!

Thanks!

Important Notice For Law Enforcement Officers Visiting This Site

Log entry for visit from King County Government's network last night. He started writing his comment at 1:02am and his commentary in response to this story about King County deputy Paul Schene was finished at 1:33am.

Last night we were honored by a visit from one of King County's finest who spent over a half hour of taxpayer's time posting a comment critical of how I cover police misconduct but don't bend over backwards to praise officers for doing what they are paid, handsomely, to do. (Experienced officers in Seattle get over $100k a year before overtime, KCSO officers appear to get an average of $80k based on 2006 records)

I'm not replying to that directly, but I am offering a bit of information to all the cops who have felt the need to try and post comments here lately...

First, officers, let me ask you this, do you find articles critical of your fellow officers who have been found to have committed acts of misconduct in your police union newsletters?

Probably not, huh?

Well, do you guys see articles critical of officers who were convicted of breaking the law at the websites run by your fellow cops?

Nah?

Do you expect that any of the thousands of organizations and associations out there dedicated to support police officers to also support the victims of police abuses?

Nope?

Do you see those officer memorial sites also contributing money to make memorials to innocent people murdered by cops?

Unlikely, huh?

Then let me ask you this...

Why do you expect to see one of the handful (I could probably count the legitimate ones that haven't been scared off by threats from officers on my hands) of sites dedicated to helping and advocating for the victims of police misconduct to praise you guys and ignore all the stories of police misconduct and of officers who get away with it?

Why is it that, with all of the billions of dollars at the disposal of all these groups that support police officers, that you feel the need to attack the unfunded efforts of a few to help the people who are victimized by the worst of your profession?

Why is it that you are all so thin skinned and fragile of ego that you feel affronted when articles about acts of brutality performed by one of your fellow officers is posted anywhere in print or on electronic media that you feel the need to threaten those who simply report the truth?

Yeah, that wouldn't make sense, would it?

So, I'll make it clear for you officers, like the one who spent taxpayer time to criticize this site and the one who goes by "Bad Boy In Blue" from Tempe AZ who thinks it's a good idea to try and defend bad cops by slandering their victims...

This site isn't here to sing your praises, you have multitudes of others who do that for you all the time.

It is here to support victims of police misconduct and work towards making it harder for the worst of your profession to keep giving all of you a bad name through their unpunished misdeeds.

So, if you come here to trash someone just because they claim to be a victim of police misconduct, I'll delete your comment.

If you come here to criticize me for criticizing the police officers who do bad things and those who defend those bad acts, I will ignore you.

If you come here expecting someone with rose-colored glasses to fall for your sob stories about how we should ignore police misconduct because cops have it so hard, even when you have so many resources at your disposal and your victims have none... you will be sorely disappointed.

If you want someone to defend you no matter what horrible things you do, go talk to your union rep or your mom... don't come here.

Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 04-10-09 - Local Edition

Comment we received last year from a Chicago cop.

Before I get to the news...

Last month I made a plea asking people to post and talk about the raid Phoenix PD performed on a blogger who posted information about police misconduct down in Phoenix AZ in order to shut him down. I was really worried that if nobody spoke up about it that other departments elsewhere would be encouraged to try this tactic on other bloggers too.

I have to say that I'm really encouraged that this story took off after Carlos Miller posted a great piece about it over at his site Photography Is Not A Crime. After that it went all over, including Simple Justice, The Agitator, Fresno Criminal Defense, and then it went national just today via AP.

I was really worried that the story was going to just die off but it's got legs now... so hopefully police departments elsewhere will think twice about trying this tactic out on the other sites that talk about police misconduct... like this one.

(for a really great post with tons of information on that story along with some awesome timelines, visit this site here!)

Now for some local police misconduct news...

Can I Get An Employee Discount Too?

Now, if some strange man was wandering around your teenage daughter's window while wearing a hoodie at night, you'd be a bit nervous, right?

Well, in Spokane WA that happened to one family. The police came out to investigate and met with a rather uncooperative individual who began to fight with officers when asked why he was prowling around a teenage girl's window at night.

He was arrested, but then the charges were dropped... because he's a cop.

The Spokane city prosecutor, Jim Bledsoe, decided to not press charges despite ample evidence against now Ex-Spokane County Sheriff's Sergeant Patrick "Pete" Bunch simply because he was a cop, no other reason.

Of his decision, he was quoted by the Sheriff as saying:

"...although what Sgt. Bunch did was a technical violation of the law and at times obviously unprofessional, he felt their job was to go after criminals and not law enforcement officers demonstrating a temporary lapse in judgment,”

“He also told me that they considered Sgt. Bunch’s career in public service as one of the factors in their decision"

Officer Bunch's distinguished career included a 2003 incident that almost cost him his job when he was caught lying about 99 hours of vacation time on his timesheets and a 2004 incident where he tried to influence his way out of a ticket by flashing his badge to an unimpressed officer. And an unspecified confrontation that he had with the son of a former prosecutor for the county.

I wonder if I would get a get out of jail free card from that prosecutor for my years of dedicated service as a systems engineer?

Et Tu, Quid Pro Quo?

A Medina WA police officer was accused of raping a woman he arrested a day after he stopped her and found she was driving on a suspended license and had some pot in her car.

The officer apparently told her "Don't worry, the charges will go away" while she was cuffed in the back of his cruiser after he commented on how cute she was. So, they exchanged numbers and the next day he brought her back to his place where the woman claims that he raped her after she said no to his advances.

...however, she apparently waited to report the crime until after the officer had urged the prosecutor get the charges dropped on her behalf.

They Let The Dogs Out... Woof?

Lawyers representing the city of Kennewick WA have lost a civil rights violation case on appeal that was filed against the city for an incident in 2003.

It appears as though Kennewick police were searching for the the vile criminal who was suspected of the insidious crime of riding a moped without a headlight or helmet when they happened on poor innocent Ken Rogers (not the country star).

Officers, worried deeply about public safety with a criminal like this on the loose, unleashed their attack dog on Rogers who caused severe nerve damage to his left hand... then officers, unsatisfied with that, beat him until he suffered hearing loss from the attack...

The problem was that Rogers wasn't the criminal they were looking for... seems their highly trained attack dog "DEKE" picked up his scent by mistake when officers were trying to find their suspect.

Kennewick has been ordered to pay Rogers the sum of $1.8 Million Dollars.

Reader Request: Show Support For Community Leader at Court Hearing Today

This story came to my attention last night via Twitter @juliechang206 concerning the case of Wyking Allah who was essentially arrested for trespassing in the NW African American Heritage Museum that he helped found and worked with.

His arrest appeared to be, from what I recall reading at the time, more of an effort to keep him from saying what he wanted to say about some disconcerting "anti-gang" legislation in the works at the time during the opening ceremonies for the museum and cultural center than a question of his trespassing on property that he worked to create.

Several different organizations have been working on helping with his defense against those charges, this was from one of those groups, the UmojaFest P.E.A.C.E Center here in Seattle that Wyking also co-founded:

Subject: Support Wyking Allah in court tomorrow


From: Leith Jasinowski-Kahl
To: people who are down
Subject: Support Wyking in court tomorrow

Wyking Allah was unfairly arrested in March of 2007 for speaking the truth at an event organized on behalf of Seattle's ruling class.  Billed as the "grand opening of NAAM", the event was in fact a celebration of the privatization and theft of the African American Heritage Museum and Cultural Center from the Black working class community. This theft was engineered by white developers with the assistance of the Urban League. (See link below for more background on this arrest and the issues surrounding it.)

http://hiphopnews.yuku.com/topic/427/t/NW-Hip-Hop-newsletter-March-April-Edition.html

Wyking Allah is innocent of all charges.  He is an officer of the African American Heritage Museum and Cultural Center, which is both the rightful and legal owner of the land he was standing on at the time of his arrest.  He therefore cannot be guilty of trespass on the land of his own people.
http://www.aahmcc.org/facts.html

The next court hearing in the state's prosecution of this man of the people, Wyking Allah, will take place tomorrow:

Friday April 10th 10 AM Seattle Municipal Courthouse, 5th and James,  Room 1102

The defense has assembled an extensive list of witnesses to prove that Wyking was standing on his own institution's land. What is at stake tomorrow is whether the court will agree to hear the testimony of these witnesses, or whether it will again prove itself to be a kangaroo court of white supremacy by rejecting their testimony before it his heard.

All honest men and all honest women are called upon to be there tomorrow, in body if possible, and otherwise in spirit. Stay alert for more news as this struggle continues.

So, if you know Wyking or are familiar with this case, make plans to head down to the hearing and show your support.

About the 2008 Annual Report From the Seattle Police OPA

The Seattle Police Department Office of Professional Accountability (SPD OPA, which is Seattle's version of an internal affairs department) released their annual report recently. Most of it is the same old - same old... but there were some interesting tidbits hidden within it's convoluted depths.

First, as you might recall, the OPA is still limited to a 180 day deadline in which any sustained findings of misconduct against an officer are nullified if an investigation takes longer than 180 days... a sort of free pass for bad cops, as it were.

(this site broke the story that, despite the city's insistence that they removed that rule in contract negotiations with the union, that the union actually forced the city to back down and leave it in place. Something the police union has bragged about in their newsletter lately too.)

The worrisome news in the report is that the average time it takes, from the moment a complaint is received to the time a determination is made, is 173 days. That means there is only a 7 day window on average between an officer getting a free pass and getting disciplined for misconduct.

In that regard, the OPA admitted that there were 2 cases in 2008 where the 180 day window had elapsed which resulted in sustained findings being overturned.

There were 98 complaints of excessive force in 2008, (out of over 1300 overall complaints), but only two were sustained. One of which was recently overturned by one of the five separate levels of appeal available to officers. So only one excessive force complaint in 2008 resulted in the termination of an officer.

The overturned finding was the case of Don "Diamond Don" George which we covered a few days ago. He was accused of bashing a handcuffed suspect's head against the backseat partition in a cruiser and then lying about it to OPA investigators.

Despite his long history of complaints and that the department's appeal committee felt he probably did do what he was accused of, they overturned the chief's decision to fire him and gave him a brief suspension instead, forcing the city to hire him back.

So, only one sustained finding of excessive force and dishonesty were actually sustained and disciplined, and that case involved the officer in this video:



Where Mark Hays was beaten by one of SPD's notorious "Anti-Crime Team" officers. In that case, Hays and his friend, Michael Lujan, were stopped when they jaywalked in front of an undercover SPD ACT SUV and the officers escalated the confrontation into the beatdown seen in a dashcam recording of a responding cruiser.

Mark Hays has filed a pro-se lawsuit against the SPD and officers involved in that case. So far it appears as though that officer still remains off the force, but it's unclear whether it will remain that way given all the different appeal options available to officers...

While it's clear the SPD still does a very poor job investigating complaints of excessive force, the new "assumption of termination" for findings of dishonesty provision is also under fire as the Seattle Police Officer's Union has assured officers that this rule is unenforceable since the burden of proof is so high... so far, based on the appeal record, it appears they have a point.

Which is a fact that the OPA is apparently aware of as this disclaimer was slipped into the report:

"However, it is clear from reviewing OPA Sustained cases appealed in 2008 that the Department cannot always predict whether its findings or the disciplined imposed will be upheld."

Based on this report, and others, this site still highly recommends that any victims of police misconduct consult an attorney prior to filing a complaint with the SPD OPA as the complaint process is still highly biased and fatally flawed.

The complaints are often used to gather information for attorneys representing the city in preparation for defense against civil suits instead of to honestly investigate officer wrongdoing.

Please keep this in mind if you become a victim of police misconduct in Seattle.

Is Reporting Police Misconduct Career Suicide?

On December 23, 2008, King County Sheriff’s Deputy Brian Bonnar was acquitted of federal deprivation of civil rights charges that were filed against him on allegations that he had used excessive and unnecessary force when he arrested 41 year old Irene Damon. After reading the verdict, the judge in this case offered a stinging rebuke for Bonnar by suggesting that despite the jury’s decision that there was ample evidence that Bonnar’s conduct was not appropriate.

On March 13, 2009, King County Sheriff’s Deputy Don Griffee was acquitted of fourth degree assault charges that were filed against him on allegations that he had punched 21 year old Johnny Bradford while he was handcuffed in the back seat of a cruiser. Despite the verdict, jurors said they felt that Bradford’s testimony was believable, but that Griffee had offered a case of plausible deniability that prevented them from finding him guilty beyond all doubt.

On February 26, 2009, King County Sheriff’s Deputy Paul Schene plead not guilty to fourth degree assault charges that were filed against him on the basis of a video recording of him kicking, punching, and manhandling 15 year old Malika Calhoun in a holding cell. The video was released to the media a day later and it sparked outrage all over the world which prompted the US Department of Justice to consider pressing federal civil rights violation charges against Schene.

These cases are not uncommon in that there were allegations of abuse leveled against police officers.

These cases are not noteworthy just because they all came from the same precinct and police department.

Nor are they uncommon because of the results in which evidence and testimony that would convict a normal person were insufficient to convict a cop. After all, when 73% of white Americans do not believe police officers ever use excessive force, it’s nearly impossible to find an unbiased jury pool out there.

No, these cases are incredibly unique in the world of police misconduct in that, in each of these cases, it was a police officer who brought these allegations to the attention of their department, that the department listened to the officers who complained and investigated the accusations, that the department recommended charges in response to them, and did not silence the allegations and punish the officers that reported them.

Yes, these cases are incredible in that the officers who reported them didn’t face retribution for doing so… at least not that we can tell yet. But, will that culture within that department last after the sheriff is gone? Or will the union work to shift things back to an environment where officers are afraid to tell the truth in fear of retaliation from fellow officers and supervisors?

Indeed, a good portion of the reason why police officers do not report incidents of misconduct isn’t just because of the cultural pressures not to snitch that their fellow officers put upon them. It’s that the “no snitching” culture is actually enforced by practice within police departments across the US and that it’s expected that officers who report misconduct will be punished by their departments and eventually forced out or fired on allegations that normally wouldn’t result in termination.

That fact was recently reinforced when a reader commented to a story we published in February detailing the surprising number of police department heads who have been embroiled in allegations of misconduct in recent months. That reader posted this in response to that story:

"I can explain why most good officers do not step forward. I was an officer that stepped forward to report about one of the Chiefs on this very list and now I will never be a police officer again.

No agency would take me and it has caused many sleepless nights for me but I have come to terms with the fact that I did what was right. Seeing the justice that was done here makes me feel like I did right but that isn’t good for a person who has only police work to fall back on.

Reporting abuse over another cop, let alone a chief, is career suicide."

At first the reader who posted this wished to remain anonymous and not have the details of what he was referring to made public, and for good reason. But now he’s given us permission to tell the rest of his story of how police officers in America are usually treated when they try to bring misconduct allegation to light.

Here’s what he told us about what happened to him in a follow-up email:

"I was employed in Roberts, Wisconsin for a few years as a patrol officer. All was well until the day that the board decided that the part time police chief job needed to be full time.


The village board decided to hire Ricci Prein and all seemed well at first. At least until one evening when I found Chief Prein drinking while working on a squad car in the municipal garage. I found this to be a compromising position so I reported it to the board.


From that day on I was written up for any crazy thing such as the squad car being on the low end of full gauge or the oil dipstick, or not getting trash to the curb by 3 am when it got picked up at 3 pm that day.


I was also written up on several occasions for my military reserve service and when he was told he was wrong for doing so he still refused to retract anything. The harassment finally got so bad that one day I decided it was enough and I resigned from the department.


After my resignation I was unable to find a job for many years because of the things he would tell prospective employers about me. I tried to take it to court but the fact that I had no money and no lawyer in the area would handle it because of conflict of interests, I gave up. I was still lucky enough, if you call it that, to be called to active duty in the current war 2 times, which helped pay bills."

This, sadly, is what usually happens when officers report incidents of misconduct, whether it’s against another police officer or a supervisor. There are few real protections against retaliation for reporting misconduct and there is little impetus to change that since city governments benefit from this culture of retribution since it prevents officers from testifying in civil rights violation cases that could cause embarrassment to local governments and loses in court.

Most of the time, the story ends there. The police officer never finds work again and the culture of corruption continues on unabated and even more secure after examples have been made of officers who dared to cross the blue wall of silence.

But not in this officer’s case:

"After my deployments I returned home and wondered how to address this. I finally decided to run for the village president position (mayor). I won the election and there by became Prein's boss.


Now, I didn’t do anything to him personally, all I did was bring current concerns to the village board as should have been done in the first place when I reported the issues I had seen. I even abstained from any votes pertaining to those allegations. All this being said and done, the board finally made the decision that he was wrong all the time in the past and that he needed to be fired."

Ricci Prein was eventually fired in July of 2008 on five counts of misconduct in office, seven months after the village board laid out their case against him, and years after this officer first made his concerns known to the village board. However, he proved he wasn’t done getting back at that officer yet.

The officer’s name is Eric Fisher and he had recently run for re-election as village president. He might have won if it weren’t for constant public attacks made by ex-chief Prein made via letters to the editor in the local paper that not only attacked Fisher, but also his wife. That election ended yesterday with Fisher losing to his rival by 44 votes.

So, yes, Fisher is right in that, in most cases, reporting police misconduct can be a matter of career suicide. When we ask ourselves why officers won't report the misconduct they see and we say that it's because they are bad officers, we should remind ourselves of what happens to the good ones and how little support they receive from their community. For us to have better expectations from them, we must expect to support and reward them ourselves.

But, fortunately in this case, Fisher found another calling and this story still has a positive ending where most might not. Fisher now works at a high school with special education children. While it doesn’t pay what a police officer gets, it’s something that Fisher can put his determination towards good use once again.

He ended his story by saying this:

“I can never be a cop again, but hey, I love what I am doing now and hopefully when we recover completely from all this I will finish my degree in teaching and become a full time teacher."

While police unions would use cases like this as an argument that they need even more layers of appeals and protections to fight allegations of misconduct made against officers, this isn’t true. The answer to the problem of retaliation against officers who report misconduct isn’t to make it harder to discipline officers found to have committed acts of misconduct.

The answer is simple actually. As Karl Mansoor, an ex-police officer and law enforcement ethics instructor who fought his own battle against retribution for reporting misconduct, tells his readers… the answer is to make the complaint, investigation, and disciplinary processes transparent to the public in order to remove the incentives that keep misconduct and the retribution suffered for reporting it a secret.

The best solution to the problem of police misconduct and the culture of silence prevalent in police departments across the nation is to shine a little light on them.

Who Do You Call On A Cop?

Police culture's "Blue Wall of Silence" -The most effective no-snitching campaign in history.

One question that I've asked myself over and over again ever since I became a victim of police misconduct is what will I do when it happens again?

More specifically, would I do anything differently while it was happening to me again... and, perhaps more importantly, what would I do when I saw it happening to someone else?

I'm not alone in this, as a reader's recent letter illustrates:

"I have also been the victim of police excessive force and their arbitrary charging practices.

In my case, I was brutally grabbed by the windpipe by a police officer who outweighed me by at least 50 pounds. I was thrown face down onto the street, handcuffed, and kicked in the face and ribs while I was on the ground.

This all transpired after I had the audacity to yell out the word "Hey!" as exited from a restaurant where I encountered five police officers in the parking lot who were beating a teenage girl they had on the ground whom (I later learned) they were attempting to arrest for loitering.

Apparently, the cops took offense at my taking offense at the treatment that they were giving the young lady, all on the utterance of a single word of protest (and being in the wrong place at the wrong time with that opinion)."

I spent the night in jail on an "opposing a police officer" charge. To make matters worse, while I was locked up, different cops kept coming by and abused me verbally... in the hope that I would get angry enough to give them the excuse to take some other physical action against me.

The charges against him were dismissed, but that will never dismiss what it's done to him even though this happened many years ago.

"I've since witnessed numerous other incidences (of police misconduct) in other cities that I have lived in. But I now know enough to keep my mouth shut and to just stay out of it.


I admit that I feel pretty damned ashamed that the police – who are supposed to be the "good guys" – have intimidated me to the extent that I actually fear them enough to not want to speak out publicly against such abuse.


...when the cops are breaking the law, who do you call?"

While at first glance his response to being a victim of misconduct might seem detestable, but actually it's quite reasonable... there's no shame in it.

After all, ask yourself that same question, who would you trust to call on the police when the police act like criminals?

That's the question, isn't it? Who do you call when the police are brutally assaulting someone? Who do you cry out to for help while they are beating you? Sadly, the answer should be nobody.

See, you cannot intervene in an act of police misconduct without becoming another victim of it, and once you are arrested and beaten too your testimony would be discredited by police. Any hope the original victim had of the truth coming to light will have evaporated as soon as you stepped in to stop it. By intervening you do more harm than good... unless you're a cop... but cops hardly ever intervene except to help with the beating.

This is the sinister nature of police misconduct that I always seem to fail at explaining. It's the very heart of just how badly police misconduct shatters a victim's trust in our system of justice, in our society as a whole. This is at the heart of why it's so life-shattering... after a cop victimizes you, you'll never have anyone you can turn to for help again, nor anyone you would call to help someone else aside from yourself.

It's also hard to explain to others how it would be difficult for most victims of police abuse to call the police if we witnessed a crime or even if we were the victims of crime... after all, how will you know if a good cop will come to help or a bad one will come to victimize the victim, or you, even further?

Trust me, once you learn and understand what sadism some officers are capable of, you would balk at taking that risk again too. I know I don't want to go through being beaten up, arrested on a false charge, and then abused in jail without any access to medical care again... would you?

But the damage done by police misconduct goes even beyond that... think of all of the friends of victims who also have doubts about calling the police after they see how their friends were mistreated by police officers... and wonder at how that number of people grows exponentially as more and more victims are created each day by the police.

Police officials and politicians often bemoan the "culture of no snitching" which is prevalent in our cities these days, wondering at what causes it... not being able to understand why their citizens don't want to talk to their police officers.

Perhaps, for the answer to that question, they have no further to look than their own police departments.

Maybe the very first question that they should ask is... who would they trust to call on their police when their police act just like the criminals they are supposed to arrest?

About that Twitter

I got a few questions about my decision in the previous post to stop using Twitter as a news feeder for stories about police misconduct and why I changed my mind and started the feed back up.

Well, I decided to stop using it because my original intent for it was to show just how many reports there were of police misconduct each day in the US and give people interested in police misconduct a handy way to get information on those stories... but, not many people were really interested in it so I decided that little experiment was a failure... at least as far as the original intent was concerned.

But, after I looked over the data I collected by recording all those stories in Twitter, I found it would be useful to track this information from a statistical point of view, as pointed out in the previous post.

So I decided a better way to do that would be to record these reports in a database and codify them to make it easier to break down those statistics by type of misconduct and where misconduct might be most prevalent.

However... after a day worth of entering in the information from each story into a spreadsheet I found that I would never have enough time each day to do this because there were just too many reports to track each day and I have two jobs on top of what I do here, it just wasn't feasible.

But, Posting the stories and links to Twitter was very easy and I could always go back to those later and dissect them for the pertinent data I wanted to track when I had the time to do so.

So, I decided to start the feeds back up via Twitter... not with the expectation that anyone would actually follow them, but for my own statistical tracking.

If others want to read it or use the information I post, that's swell! But, that's not why I'm doing it anymore, it's just to gather stats on police misconduct, that's all.

Hope that answers any questions anyone might have had.

A Month of Police Misconduct in the News

If you haven't noticed, I started using Twitter (here) around the beginning of last month as a sort of extension for this site, a sort of "headline news feed" of sorts. Specifically, I use it to post any news articles that I come across that are related to police misconduct or detainee abuse.

It was an interesting month's worth of effort, but ultimately there wasn't enough interest to justify the time it takes to write up the feeds, few people were actually reading them. (though, one person did write to say they did find them interesting, thanks for that!)

But, even though I'm going to stop using Twitter since there aren't many people reading the feeds, the practice of recording these articles did help me notice something interesting...

Over the month-long effort of tracking stories of police misconduct and detainee abuse I've recorded at least 79 unique stories of police misconduct or detainee abuse.

Yes, 79 incidents reported in the news in one month's worth of time.

Of these reports:

• 10 articles covered 15 separate officers who were convicted of criminal acts. 2 of those officers will return to work with the same department after conviction.
• 29 stories that covered the trial, arrest, indictment, or charges filed against 39 police officers and 3 police chiefs.
• 12 stories about civil rights lawsuits against police departments, 3 of which resulted in awards totaling $1,625,000.
• 28 stories detailing accusations of police misconduct, 8 of which were captured on video.
• 3 Articles detailing investigations into jails accused of violating the rights of prisoners, including one against Seattle's King County Jail which is already under federal oversight for past rights violations.

Further breaking these down I found that, of these stories:

• 10 covered cases of alleged murder or attempted murder. 8 of which resulted in at least one death.
• 11 concerned allegations of or convictions for sexual abuse of children.
• 24 involve allegations of police brutality.
• 8 deal with allegations of domestic violence
• 14 cases where entire teams, sections, or an entire department has been accused of systematic abuses. One of which has a city contemplating dissolving their police department.
• 2 involve questionable police actions taken against people who report on issues of police misconduct.
• 3 involve police departments who were forced to rehire officers after sustained findings or convictions for misconduct.

I could go on, but the point is that all of these stories that I tracked for a month involved serious allegations and 10 of which resulted in actual convictions.

Many articles I didn't track involve officers accused of petty offenses and acts of misconduct like traffic accidents, falsifying overtime records, or other interdepartmental infractions. Also, there are undoubtedly several I missed because there are so many different keywords to track and filter.

So, are these just a few bad eggs in an otherwise healthy basket? Are 79 distinct cases reported in the press in a single month a sign of a healthy law enforcement system in the US?

Even though I'm going to stop using Twitter, I still think it's important for me to continue keeping count in order to see just how pervasive and systemic police misconduct really is in the US and give a summary each month. So I'll be recording what I find in a database in order to generate some useful statistics on police misconduct in America. Statistics that nobody else has really bothered to gather in any serious way up to now.

What do you think?

Stay tuned...

Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 04-01-09

There's a lot of interesting stories going on, so I thought I'd post an assortment of items today with no real theme.

Attorney Paul Richmond's Take on "Drug Czar" Kerlikowske
Attorney Paul Richmond is a civil rights attorney working in the Olympic Peninsula area who, among other things, has done a lot of work in the area of protester rights cases as well as teaching courses on how to film the police during protests. So, his perspective on how Kerlikowske has treated the issue of free speech and how he has dealt with criticism comes from experience, and he tells what he knows in an in-depth review of soon-to-be drug czar Kerlikowske's apparent contempt of free speech rights. (a link to Paul Richmond's blog is here since some are having trouble navigating to the linked entry)

While I did a story covering Kerlikowske's disinterest in detainee rights and issues of police abuses, Richmond's review of his frightening record towards first amendment rights is quite possibly much more frightening given the drug czar's supposed role in governance. It's a very interesting read and I highly suggest you go check it out.

The Problem and Solution of The Blue Wall of Silence
The always interesting Karl Mansoor brings his perspective as an ex-police officer and current law enforcement instructor to bear on the issue of the police code of silence in a post that references a comment made in one of my articles on the spate of police chiefs who have been facing allegations of misconduct and corruption.

The comment, specifically, deals with an officer who came forward to report the misconduct of one of the chiefs I mention and suffered for it, which the commentor says is the reason officers don't have any incentive to report abuses. While I do think that's an important point in that it addresses how distorted the civil service laws have become when they allow departments to punish cops who cross the blue wall of silence but makes it impossible for them to fire cops for acts of misconduct and brutality. But Karl has his own take on the issue, and it's pretty good reading.

There's a Crime Wave in Davie Florida!
Carlos Miller over at Photography Is Not A Crime talks about a crime wave in Davie Florida... but it appears to be the police who are committing the crimes, not the criminals. Several officers there have apparently run astray of the law with some accused of rape and one accused of threatening to murder his pregnant wife.

Carlos mentions these stories in response to another local area blogger who asks people to consider how stressful police work is when they read about these criminal offenses committed by police officers... one wonders if that blogger feels the same way about criminal offenses committed by normal citizens feeling stressed out too?

(by the way, police unions in Florida are trying to push through a new law that will make it more difficult for cities to discipline officers there. They say internal affairs is too overzealous when investigating complaints... seems to be the opposite in Davie Florida at least.)

Ft. Wayne Officials Afraid To Release Police Shooting Video
This was a recent story out of Fort Wayne Indiana where an officer has been accused of needlessly shooting a man 18 times. While internal investigations cleared the officer of any wrongdoing, like they always do, and he still has his badge and gun, but officials are refusing requests for the video out of fears that it would go national and disturb a lot of people...

From the article which quotes a lawyer who has seen the video:

As the officer tries to open Lemus-Rodriguez’s door, the car begins to go in reverse, Lee said. Arnold, in front of the car just off the passenger side, immediately fires three shots into the windshield. The officer who tried to open the door recoils with his hands in the air, as if startled by the shots, Lee said.

“It was shocking that even one shot was seen as necessary or warranted under the circumstances,” Lee said.

There’s a pause in the shooting. Arnold then fires more rounds into the windshield, Lee said. Arnold walks methodically toward the car as he fires, Lee said. At some point, the car makes a sharp turn.

There are no officers in the car’s path visible on the videos, Lee said.

“The other thing is there were two police officers behind the car that were in far greater danger of the crossfire from the shots, the 15 total shots by the police officer doing the shooting, than they were by the possibility of being hit by a car in reverse,” Lee said.

So... if the officer was cleared of wrongdoing, I wonder why city officials are so afraid of the national attention releasing the video would cause?

New York State Seeks To Force Cities To Cede Disciplinary Rights
Legislators in New York state are seeking to create a law that would force municipalities to negotiate issues of disciplinary action with their local police unions, effectively giving police officers a say in how, and if, they can be disciplined for acts of misconduct.

They should look to the city of Seattle to see the implications of such a law since Seattle has been forced to do this for years and had to recently bribe the guild with unheard of pay raises to implement a portion of recommended disciplinary reforms... the portions that ended up not being enforceable without the other recommended reforms.

Now, of course, officers who blow the whistle on misconduct need protections from retribution and officers need a barrier to protect them from politically motivated disciplinary actions... but those protections don't work and only protect problematic officers from being fired or disciplined. The solution to fix that isn't by giving the police unions, the groups that defend problematic officers, a say in how they can or can't be disciplined.

That's how they do it now in Seattle, and we all know how horribly it's turned out since officers here have five different levels of appeals that they can try after they've had a sustained misconduct finding, thanks to the union's ability to force the city to cave by threatening to protest in front of city hall each time it's come to negotiating a new contract.

Reader Submitted: Charges Dropped Against Man Who Shot At Cop
This one was sent to me by a reader who thought it was extraordinary that a citizen who shot at a police officer in self defense will not be charged. It is pretty damn rare, I agreed... however, I don't agree with describing the man as "getting off scott free" as they do in most of the news articles...

After all, the man lost his leg in the shooting, spent 13 months in jail waiting for trial, drained his savings hiring investigators, and will now be stuck with legal and medical bills even though he was cleared of any wrongdoing... hardly what I would call "scott free", but at least he has his freedom, huh? By the way, the officer who didn't announce himself got a medal of valor out of the exchange.