Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 02-13-09 - Local Edition

A lot of news going on in Seattle so instead of a regular News Watch I'm turning the focus local for this issue... even though I have a lot of catching up to do for some national stories I'm looking into.

Arrested For Standing While Black
Tim Harris at the always intriguing Apesmas Lament tells the tale of a Real Change newspaper vendor named Donald Morehead who was selling copies of the local advocacy weekly paper when a Seattle Police officer allegedly knocked one of his teeth out, slammed his head against a cruiser, and then arrested him...

Morehead's crime?

Apparently nothing more than standing while black one of the city's "drug enforcement zones". The officer arrested Morehead on unspecified charges, though Morehead had no drugs and only a few copies of the paper and $20.00 from the copies that he had already sold.

The money was confiscated as alleged "drug money" and Morehead spent 16 days in the King County Jail until people at the paper raised enough for the $160 bail.

Tim first mentioned the case in a post on the fifth when he first discovered Morehead was in jail from a public defender who was representing him and started collecting money for his release shortly afterward.

This type of racially-based enforcement activity has been becoming more common in Seattle with the NAACP noting the issue towards the end of last year which also sparked allegations of retaliation when officers later charged a witness of a racial profiling incident named Yvonne Gaston who testified for the NAACP's news conference, of assaulting an officer a day after that conference... strangely enough, weeks after the alleged incident occurred.

Harris has recently joined with other community activists in an effort, Initiative 100, to force the city to allow voters to decide whether or not the city should build a new jail to house more prisoners or work on alternative ways to reduce the need for more jail space... like not arresting so many people on questionable charges.

Though now out on bail, Morehead is still facing charges, though no word yet about whether a legal defense fund has been established for him.

King County Deputy Charged For Beating A 15 Year Old Girl
Update: The video has been released
King County sheriff deputy Paul Schene has been charged with 4th degree assault for allegedly kicking, punching, and pulling a 15 year old girl while booking her into jail.

The incident was recorded by security cameras at the jail where the officer and his partner were booking two teenage girls into juvenile jail under suspicion of auto theft in November of last year.

He alleged in charging papers that she had assaulted him when she was removing her shoes and, according to the girl, one slipped off her foot and hit the officer in the shin.

An investigator reviewing the tapes to prepare the case of assaulting an officer against the girl saw the deputy kick the girl, shove her against a wall, take her down to the floor in a hair-hold, and then punch her twice.

Ex-Civilian Review Board Member Running For City Council
Perhaps just as interesting on a local level as was the nomination of SPD Chief Gil Kerlikowske as drug czar was the announcement from ex-OPARB member Pete Holmes that he is running for an unspecified city council seat in the next election, according to The Seattle Weekly "Daily Weekly" blog.

Holmes was one of the then three member civilian review board that sharply criticized Kerlikowske for allegedly working behind the scenes to influence an internal investigation of two officers who were accused of planting drugs and lying on arrest reports. The board then had it's last report to city council censored because of it's criticism of the department's internal investigation process before it was disbanded and all of it's members replaced.

Holmes graduated from Yale University, earned his law degree from the University of Virginia, and currently works at a local law firm specialized in commercial bankruptcy law.

Victim Of Police Excessive Force Forced To File Lawsuit On His Own
Jonah at The Stranger Blog (SLOG) has an update on the case of Mark Hays who was subjected to a barrage of punches to the head and knees to the torso when he was arrested in November of 2007 by undercover SPD "Anti-Crime Team" officers after he and a friend had jaywalked in front of their unmarked SUV. The tail end of the beating he received that night was caught on a dashcam video of a responding SPD officer's cruiser.


An internal investigation into that arrest found that the officer who beat Hays had used excessive force and that he was misleading when interviewed by investigators looking into complaints about that violent arrest, even though Hays himself was found guilty of assaulting an officer for allegedly jumping on one of the officer's backs during the incident.

It appears, according to Jonah, that Hays has now filed a civil suit against the city seeking $750,000 in damages for the beating, for improperly withholding public records, and for conspiring to deny a proper investigation into allegations of misconduct... all without a lawyer to represent him.

I certainly wish him all the best, but worry about why he's going it alone at this point.

Racism Rising In Seattle

James Bible, head of the Seattle-King County chapter of the NAACP, 

complains of racial profiling by Seattle Police in an interview with KING5 News.

My mother was an immigrant from a small Greek island who blessed me with bronze-colored skin and a rare blood disorder similar to sickle-cell that is only found in Mediterranean people. Yet, my father's grandfather immigrated from Finland and this combination appears to confound many, or at least those who are comfortable enough to ask me, bluntly, "So, what are you anyway?"... which ultimately leads to discussions of presumption and confessions that I was thought to be mixed, Hispanic, Native American, or something else...

Honestly, this has caused some problems for me, not just from when I was beaten by a gang of racists here in Seattle or when I've been yelled at by white people here about how "my people" are taking their jobs, but also as I was growing up in some more intolerant rural areas of Ohio. It was there where the only friends I had were black because the white kids didn't find me similar enough to their liking. So it was a learning experience for me that when I would stay with my best friend at his house and go to his family events or to his church that I was usually accepted and treated kindly even though I was lighter in color than everyone else there... even though he wasn't really welcomed at my house by my family.

It's not that he was outwardly told he wasn't welcomed. But there was obvious, at least what should have been to me, discomfort for everyone whenever I would bring him over... It wasn't that my family was outwardly racist, but they were inwardly tolerant of intolerance and it showed to others, but I suppose I chose not to see it.

But, after I grew older I found out that that inward tolerance of intolerance can easily change into outward bigotry when I had my father over for my son's birthday and he started making racist comments about a football game we were watching... I was stunned, and ultimately I told him he had to leave because I didn't want my children to be exposed to that from their own grandfather... and because It personally hurt me because I myself had to deal with intolerance as a child as well.

Now, lately, I've been hearing a lot of stories on the street about racist and neo-nazi groups that have been coming into Seattle more and more frequently. People would tell me about a group of middle-aged guys with SS pins and other racist paraphernalia walking around the downtown area trying to recruit kids and I've heard stories of the groups of kids with swastika patches hanging around the malls harassing people as well.

Then there were the stories in the news about racist and bigoted graffiti being spray-painted on cars, fences, and buildings closer to Seattle than the usual strongholds for racist groups, like Renton. There were news stories of hateful pamphlets and fliers being left in mailboxes and lawns as well... then came the attacks.

Stories were coming through about people being attacked due to their racial background and their sexual orientation more and more frequently in Seattle, but nobody is sure about how frequently because the police department didn't want to track those as "hate-motivated crimes". In fact, many in the GLBT community were starting to accuse the Seattle police of refusing to investigate hate crimes and cases of assaults that were motivated by homophobia and the NAACP was accusing the SPD of doing the same about race-based attacks. The SPD promised to do something about it but due to a lack of unified pressure from the community, that failed to materialize and hate crimes have increased.

Now, as things often do, the problem has gone to the next stage where the police themselves are now being accused of showing racial bias in their policing. Citizens interviewed by the news media are telling stories of police stopping minorities just because they have new clothes on the assumption that they had to have stolen them instead of buying them. Police also stand accused of picking out any minorities who might be among a group of whites and telling them they are garbage and not welcomed.

Bigotry, of course, is a weed that grows best in the soil of apathy and seeks to, as it's simple goal, to divide people from one another. It seeks to separate black from white, homosexual from straight, and anything that is different from that which is homogeneous. What I've seen in Seattle is that, while each group decries discrimination against it's own, they don't work together to decry the same when it happens to the other group.

In fact, oddly enough, my own experience is that when I've tried to reach out and offer my support to these groups of people I get rebuffed, as if my support isn't welcomed... not that this should be considered discriminatory, but it does divide us and, ultimately, it means that we are divided in our responses to bigotry in all it's forms... it means that bigotry has succeeded in it's goal of division.

The result is that events meant to draw attention to racial profiling by police, police brutality that targets minorities, and the refusal of the police department to consider homophobic assaults as hate crimes draw very small crowds and are ultimately ridiculed or ignored by the press and the city itself. So... ultimately... we only have ourselves to blame for allowing bigotry to divide us, even if that bigotry remains silently outside of ourselves or comes unspoken from within.

Sure, Seattle is becoming more friendly to racism and bigotry because of the influx of right-wing suburbanites drawn here by aggressive gentrification, but that is only part of the problem. There remains divides between us, spoken or not, that ultimately makes Seattle a more welcoming place for hate than most of us are ready to admit... and it really shouldn't surprise us now that racism and hate have found fertile ground in a city where we chose stand divided against it or to ignore it... just like I ignored it and speak out against it happening in my own family when I was younger... and that ultimately divided us too.

It's a shame, really, because you don't have to be only black, or white, or gay, or straight to be a victim of police misconduct or bigotry... but we still keep approaching it as if it is not everyone's problem when it really is.

Poll Results

Well, as you may have noticed, I ran a little poll to see what readers would like to see more of from me. The results are final and here's what you had to say:

First, the most votes expressed a desire that the site would be killed off and that I would be arrested for creating it. All I can say about that is it's not a goal I plan on working towards, sorry.

In second place were the votes to keep things as they are with a mix of political information, legal information, stories of misconduct, and other stuff. We'll try, but what gets posted is often at the whims of what's going on outside of our control and one of the issues lately is that the latest contract between the city and police guild may actually make it harder for news of misconduct to get out in the open instead of making that information more open to the public.

In third place was a request for more legal information and support information for victims of police misconduct... Well, I know from experience that there is definitely a lack of support resources and sources of information for victims of misconduct and abuse in Seattle. But, that's what makes it so difficult for us to provide useful and vetted information to other victims of misconduct.

See, as said numerous times, this site has no support within the city of Seattle. The "civil rights" lawyers don't like to talk with us or answer questions because they don't think there is anything in it for them to do so. Civil rights groups like the ACLU in Seattle are too busy fighting to legalize drugs and organizing politicized Gitmo torture protests while ignoring torture in their own city to pay any serious attention to local civil rights abuses, and while the NAACP has been trying to bring more attention to the issue they don't seem very interested in supporting all victims of misconduct.

So... where will we get that kind of legal and support information victims need in order to make the right choices towards seeking justice once they've been abused and get the services the need to recover? Ah, there's the problem, just as there was no place for me to turn when I was hurt, we still have no place to turn to find people willing to help others who were hurt. Being a victim of official misconduct and abuse is still a wrong within a wrong, you get hurt first by the police and then the public when your avenues to justice and support are cut off just because you've been hurt by the police.

Of course, this is why this site is here. While trying to find out what I could do about what happened to me I heard from lawyers who said they turned away hundreds of victims because their cases weren't profitable due to the way the city makes it difficult to find evidence of misconduct and how the city fights such cases legislatively and judicially. In fact, some of the lawyers who used to take such cases don't anymore because it's so unprofitable for them. Organizations like the ACLU and NAACP just don't take misconduct cases unless it's very high profile and will get them some exposure in the press, they don't even give out referrals anymore since there are so few lawyers who take such cases.

So, since Seattle won't help all these victims of misconduct and won't help us help them, we're reaching out to other cities and states in an effort to find that information our fellow victims desperately need. Once we get enough information we'll publish it and make it accessible to the people who need it, not just on the site either.

We've heard you, we know there's a desperate need out there for more information and support, and we're doing what we can to meet that need. So, stay tuned.

Friday Update

First, as you might see over on the sidebar, the NAACP is continuing their public forums on police brutality in Seattle. It seems they've done four so far and two more are upcoming. Sadly, I would have posted the dates and places but it seems they don't like the site much and never got back to me with that information when I requested it.

Sad, really, that none of the people who are supposedly against police misconduct are ever willing to talk with each other in this city... I'd imagine that we could make better progress if we all worked together. Islands all are we it seems.

So, if you want to find out details on the last two public meetings where, supposedly, you can complain to them about police mistreatment, visit the story at the Seattle PI.

Anyway, next, sorry for the lack of posting this week, I was out of state on a business trip and didn't get as much time to write as I had hoped to. Things will be back to normal for a while I think.

Stay safe out there everyone.

Seattle NAACP Hearings on Police Misconduct

Last week we posted information on the first of a supposed series of hearings on police misconduct being sponsored by the NAACP.

We've been trying to get more information on the hearings, perhaps a schedule or more details but the local NAACP site is pretty outdated and it appears as though the contact information is no longer valid as the requests we made went unanswered.

So, if any of you know how we can contact the local chapter of the NAACP or has information to share about these community hearings please let us know.

Thanks!

NAACP Hosting Police Conduct Hearings In Seattle

Per the Seattlest and the Seattle PI, the local chapter of the NAACP is hosting a series of hearings throughout Seattle and surrounding areas in the next few weeks in order to assess police conduct issues with minorities and the poor.

The first hearing is scheduled for Thursday, March 27 at 6:00pm in the Garfield Community Center. The hearings will discuss police conduct issues including the disparity of police treatment towards minorities in light of the Seattle Post Intelligencer series that indicated the police arrest minorities on stand-alone obstruction charges 80% more often than whites and that 50% of those stand-alone obstruction charges end up being dropped as being unfounded.

The hearings will consist of a panel of two local Seattle University professors and two citizens who have been the victim of police misconduct and will issue a report of findings on police misconduct issues sometime this summer.

We appreciate and support their efforts towards keeping police misconduct issues in the forefront during contract negotiations between the city and the police guild that include several critical accountability and oversight reforms.

Responses to KCCF Prisoner Abuses: Update

As frequent readers may know, I've been a bit critical of the apparent hypocricy of human rights groups who have protested in Seattle against suspected human rights abuses in Guantanamo while known abuses occur down the street from their protest site in the King County Jail.

Frequent readers may also know that I wanted to be fair about it so I sent messages to all those groups asking what their official position was in regards to prisoner abuse in the KCCF and if there were any planned demonstrations to defend the human rights of those prisoners as well.

Here are the responses I received from those organizations:

• ACLU of Washington - Replied that they only talk to established media outlets, not bloggers like me.
• NAACP of Seattle - No reply
• The Alliance for Justice - No Reply
• Human Rights First - No Reply
• Human Rights Watch - No Reply
• Amnesty International USA - No Reply
• The City of Seattle Government's Human Rights Committee - No Reply

Given the response I received at the "Close Guantanamo Protest" yesterday and the responses at various message boards and forums, it's pretty clear that if I were a suspected terrorist then I would deserve protection from cruel and unusual punishment, but since I was a suspected criminal who was later found innocent, I deserved to be tortured.

In other words, the human rights organizations like AI and the ACLU agree with what Mr. Sims and Mr. Holgeerts say; prisoners have no rights in the King County Jail.

So, we non-terrorist victims of torture are on our own, as one representative from Amnesty International said to me on another forum, "Go have your own protest." Which is an intersting thing to say to a victim of torture who has every reason to believe he would be abducted and tortured again for demonstrating against the government that tortured him by himself in public. "Go protest and get tortured again, we're not going to help."

It's just more injustice in Seattle, as usual... their silence confirms they believe as the banner up top reads, it's not human rights for all of us, just some of us.