National Police Misconduct Reporting Project - April 2009 Statistics

PLEASE NOTE: The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project and all associated police misconduct statistical reports have been moved to http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com

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.

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!

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...

Where Norm Stamper Gets It Wrong

Image of Norm Stamper, retired Seattle Police Department Chief of Police

Normally, I respect and agree with most of what ex-Seattle Police Chief, and current member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), Norm Stamper has to say about the issue of police misconduct and brutality. He has a pretty firm grasp, as an insider, of many of the issues involved in the complex issue of how American policy and culture itself enables and encourages police brutality.

However, in his latest piece over at The Huffington Post, I found some fault with what he had to say about the shooting deaths of four Oakland police officers earlier this week and how he believes we should react to it.

Mind you, I agree that we shouldn't seek to connect too closely the deaths of those officers and the hardship it brings to their families with the severe problems with police brutality and misconduct in Oakland. I also agree that we should treat their deaths as we would any other regrettable and senseless loss of life done intentionally to another human being...

After all, we don't know what kind of police officers they were, whether they were good or bad... and it doesn't matter anyway because no matter what they didn't deserve to be killed. They deserve all the respect that any other person should get when they die. However, it's clear that we never do treat police officers like we do other people, and Norm doesn't want us to.

Just consider the response to their deaths so far... consider, for how much coverage we might think the shooting death of Oscar Grant in Oakland at the hands of a police officer received, the coverage of the shooting deaths of four Oakland Police officers was 10 times as prominent in the mainstream media than was the highly publicized death of Oscar Grant. (yes, I counted)

Sadly, Norm pushes that this is how it should be and advocates that we should enshrine them just for being police officers, just because they died performing what he feels is the most harrowing job in the US...

But it's not the most harrowing job in the US...

Sure, Norm does acknowledge that more people die on the job in other fields than police officers do, that's something I made clear a few months ago when I researched the latest statistics available to us from the US government.

In per capita death rates per occupation in 2007 (the latest stats available), law enforcement doesn't even crack the top four:
1. Fishing and Fishery Workers (111.8 per 100,000)
2. Logging Workers (86.4 per 100,000)
3. Aircraft Pilots and Flight Engineers (66.7 per 100,000)
4. Structural Iron and Steel Workers (45.5 per 100,000)
...
Law Enforcement (20.2 per 100,000)

Law Enforcement deaths barely inches into the top ten in total deaths per occupation in 2007:

Deaths by Occupation for 2007

But, as I said, Norm acknowledges this... what he is mistaken about is this:

"It doesn't occur as often as most are led to believe, certainly not as frequently as it does on TV. There are a good number of riskier occupations--mining and construction, farming and firefighting come to mind, as does fishing on the Bering Sea in the dead of winter. But there is no job, other than soldiering, where one's life can so quickly be cut short--at the hands of another. Sudden, violent death is an occupational hazard for police officers."

Here, Norm is quite mistaken in his argument that we should automatically honor police more than any other person in their deaths because they are more likely to be murdered on the job than anyone else...

Here, he's clearly wrong:

Job site deaths sorted by number of homicides

You are more likely to be murdered working as a retail clerk or manager than you are to be murdered while working as a cop. Since this is the case, I wonder why I don't see Norm arguing that we should be erecting shrines, dedicating moments of silence, and creating hundreds of Retail Clerk Memorial Funds like law enforcement officers have?

Indeed, in those numbers we see that murder isn't even the top cause of death for all law enforcement fatalities... that would be automobile accidents.

So, Norm's argument that officers who die on duty should be memorialized as heroes just for being police officers due to the risks they take by becoming police officers seems hypocritical, sadly. As I said, they should be given no less respect than any other person in their deaths...

But, part of the whole problem with police misconduct is that we raise police officers up to the level of heroes in our society, we are told to trust and respect them just for being police officers, we give their testimony more sway in courts of law and courts of public opinion just for being cops, and we are told that we should memorialize them more than any other person when they die...

...even though they are just as human and fallible as the rest of us.

The problem, you see, is as Norm says it is, that insular police culture of "Us vs Them", that culture that makes officers believe that they are better than the rest of us, that we are less human and less worthy of respect than they are...

It is that culture which enables and encourages police brutality... and by telling us we should respect those four officers who died in Oakland more than we respect Oscar Grant or any other person who dies at the hands of another simply feeds into that culture of superiority and abuse... it only serves to grow that notion of "Us vs Them".

Especially when the argument used to convince us that we should treat police officers differently than ordinary people is flawed in it's own right.

US ER Doctors Reveal They Know Police Use Excessive Force

A new report in the January 2009 edition of the Emergency Medicine Journal may contain evidence that the epidemic of police brutality in the US is very real. That report reveals that 99.8% of US Emergency Physicians believe that the police use excessive force when detaining suspects.

How are they so sure of this? The report goes on to say that 97.8% of those doctors surveyed have personally treated people that they suspect have been subjected to excessive force and nearly two-thirds of those have treated two or more victims of excessive force.

The problem, revealed in the report, is that doctors don't know what to do with that information, even though nearly half wish they did have procedures in place to report incidents where they suspect excessive force had been used by the police. This only adds to the problem as it allows those cases of misconduct to go unnoticed and even when reported by the victim, it means that doctors aren't interviewed as a means to corroborate reports of brutality.

The survey, performed primarily by Dr. Jared Strote of the University of Washington in Seattle, goes on to state that about 71% of physicians have not reported cases where they suspected excessive force and the reason for that is that nearly 97% of departments don't have any procedures in place to report such cases.

The most common forms of excessive force reported were blunt trauma caused by closed fist and foot strikes, followed by overly tightened handcuffs which have been known to cause permanent neurological damage.

However, one point to keep in mind with this report is that it only offers a glimpse of the problems with excessive force used by police officers. It does not take into account that many victims of police violence may never make it to an emergency room, instead many are taken straight to jail and some of those may never receive any medical treatment for their injuries at all.

As said before, police brutality in the US is a systemic problem and not just an issue of a few bad apples. Unfortunately the system works against victims of police misconduct and offers few chances to help those who could testify on their behalf and help stop this problem.

With reports like this, though, that finally offer a glimpse into the extent of the problem when law enforcement agencies refuse to gather any real statistics on cases of abuse, we might have some hope to convince the public that this is a real problem and that it can affect anyone, innocent and guilty alike, and thus must be addressed.

Are Bullies And Bad Cops Wired For Aggression?

fMRI images of brain activity found in teenagers diagnosed with aggressive

conduct disorder when they were shown videos of people being injured.

While most of our brains are wired to feel empathy when we witness suffering, it appears as though the same might not be true for bullies. Indeed, studies show that normally we humans are hardwired in a way that prompts activity in the areas of our brains associated with pain when we see others in pain, which is indicative of empathy.

However, a recent study out of the University of Chicago that appeared in the latest issue of Biological Psychology suggests that teenagers with a history of bullying and other aggressive activities associated with a disorder called "aggressive conduct disorder" appear to actually feel pleasure when seeing others suffer and lack activity in the area of the brain which is involved in self-regulation.

The study, co-authored by University of Chicago psychologist Benjamin Lahey, hooked up teenage bullies to a brain activity imaging device called an fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and showed them various videos of people being hurt by others and being hurt incidentally to see how their brains reacted to seeing other people suffer. The results were somewhat of a surprise.

The researchers had generally expected to see evidence of apathy towards the suffering of others, an emotional coldness and detachment that allow them to victimize others without remorse. But instead they discovered something much more worrisome, that the teenagers did have a connection with their victims and others who suffer in that they actually experienced pleasure when they witnessed other people suffering.

Specifically, images taken from normal control subjects showed activity in areas of the brain associated with pain when they were shown the same videos, something that would indicate an empathetic response, the bullies brains showed activity in the pleasure and reward centers of the brain, called the amygdala and ventral striatum instead, which indicates that their brains are wired to get pleasure from causing others to suffer.

Another way to describe it would be that it's similar to how a junky's brain responds to drugs by sparking activity in the reward and pleasure centers of the brain, encouraging the junky to get more drugs to feed an addiction. A bully's brain, it seems, similarly rewards the bully for acts of bullying and actively encourages aggressive and violent behavior on a biological level.

The study also found a striking amount of inactivity in the portions of the brain associated with self-regulation and emotional control, which means that not only might bullies get pleasure from the suffering of others, they might also have difficulties controlling their responses to seemingly minor affronts, like having a tendancy to react violently in response to someone accidentally bumping into them.

While this study only focused on individuals in their late teenage years who had histories of bullying, theft, and frequent lying, it seems possible that the same could be true for law enforcement officers who have a known history of abuses or misconduct. This wouldn't be a difficult link to make with the anecdotal evidence available which has always hinted at a link between officers who had tendencies towards aggressive behavior as children continuing that behavior as adults, almost in a way that would indicate that childhood bullies are drawn to the profession of law enforcement as an "safe" outlet for their aggressive tendencies.

This would also explain why many victims of police violence report that officers would seem to be euphoric while participating in beating suspects or why some victims of violent assaults, like domestic abuse victims, would report that some officers would joke about or make rude comments about how they were assaulted while investigating their reports.

While this study seems to be very bad news as it shows that bullies don't just have the same prohibitions towards violence that normal people do, but they have an active propensity towards violence and harm, it isn't all bad news. A finding like this may help find new ways to diagnose and treat this overly aggressive tendency in people who are predisposed to cause harm to others out of the sheer pleasure of causing harm.

While this might be good news down the road for childhood victims of bullying, there is no indication that any such study is being planned for adults, let alone a study of police officers who have a known history of aggressive behavior and abuse. So far to date, very few studies have been done to determine what causes some officers to be abusive while others are not, perhaps because of social stigmas that are supportive of such abusive behavior by law enforcement officers.

Hopefully, someday, researchers will investigate what causes some police officers to have a predisposition to react violently to seemingly minor affronts and why some officers appear to get pleasure from the suffering they witness or sometimes contribute to. Until then, there is little hope that people with such predispositions will be screened before they are allowed to work in jobs with such an opportunity to use one's authority over others in ways that only gratify the abnormal brain wiring that gives some pleasure at the suffering of others instead of empathy for those who suffer.

How Dangerous Is Police Work? (and other police misconduct statistics)

I received an email today asking, as many do, whether there are any hard statistics on police related violence and color of law abuses. Unfortunately, as I have to tell many people, there aren't any easy ways to get this kind of information for a number of reasons.

However, I've decided to compile some of the statistics I have been able to gather for Seattle and nationwide in my own ongoing research into how pervasive police misconduct really is, what the trends might indicate, and whether there are any correlations between crime rates and excessive uses of force. If statistics bore you, don't worry, I made pretty graphs too.

Just a week or so ago I posted some statistics about how complaints of excessive use of force by Seattle Police officers compare to alleged incidents of assault on an officer. I did this to get an idea of whether or not the commonly used excuse for excessive force, being that police work is dangerous so officers need to use physical force even when none is used against them, really had any justification by the numbers.

Number of alleged incidents of assault on an officer, alleged injuries to officers from assaults, and excessive use of force complaints in Seattle

As you can see above, while complaints of excessive force have generally been trending upwards, the allegations of assault on an officer and any corresponding claims of injuries by officers stemming from said allegation have been on a clear decline. In fact, allegations of assault on an officer fell by over 200 and injury rates have more than halved since the year 2000 while complaints of excessive force have increased over the same period. This would seem to indicate that police aggressiveness is not a defensive response to a more violent populous.

Some might argue that the job of a policeman is still more dangerous than other jobs if you look outside of Seattle. Well, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released their report on occupational fatalities for 2007 (on 08/20/2008) and I decided to take a look to see how dangerous police work was on a national scale as another comparison point to see if this excuse for more aggressive use of force by police was valid on a national scale.

According to the BLS Occupational Fatalities press release, the top four most dangerous occupations in terms of deaths per worker are:

1. Fishing and Fishery Workers (111.8 per 100,000)
2. Logging Workers (86.4 per 100,000)
3. Aircraft Pilots and Flight Engineers (66.7 per 100,000)
4. Structural Iron and Steel Workers (45.5 per 100,000)

To make a comparison I calculated the fatality rate for law enforcement officers which comes in around 20.2 per 100,000 based on 2007 employment level statistics, nearly 6 times safer than working as fisherman and twice as safe as working in a steel mill.

Further into the depths of the report they provide are the actual number of deaths per profession, of which the top 10 appear to be:

Deaths by Occupation for 2007

So, even by counting the number of deaths instead of the per capita death rates it appears as though law enforcement ranks a bit on the safer side when compared to several other occupations. Of course, one could try to argue that it's still more dangerous in terms of having to worry about being shot at on a daily basis, right?

Well... let's break it down to see what the homicide rates on the job might be:

Job site deaths sorted by number of homicides

In this comparison we see that Law Enforcement homicide rates are at 37% of the total fatality rate for the occupation, making it the third most likely occupation in which a person might be murdered, but only fourth in the total number of murder victims overall. This might seem to indicate that it's pretty dangerous, but lets do some further comparisons...

The per capita murder rate for law enforcement officers in the US in 2007 was 8.07 per 100,000
The per capita accidental death rate for the United States in 2006 was 38.1 per 100,000
For 2007 there were 43 cities in the US where the per capita murder rate was higher than 8.07 per 100,000
The 2007 per capita murder rate in the worst city of the US (Detroit) is 47.3 per 100,000
The 2006 per capita murder rate in Seattle was 5.1 per 100,000


So, on average, it's more dangerous for a civilian to walk in some US cities than it is to work as a police officer in the US. In fact, in 2007, it appears as though it was more dangerous to be a civilian in Seattle than it was to be a police officer as the per capita murder rate was 5.1 per 100,000 but the law enforcement murder rate was 0 per 1,000.

How does Seattle stack up for use of force complaints?

Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), in 2002 the national average for use of force complaints against officers in medium to large municipal police departments was around 9.5 per every 100 officers. In Seattle, for 2007, the rate was 10.3 per 100.

Nationally, use of force complaints are sustained in approximately 8% of cases, in Seattle complaints for 2007 were sustained in a suspiciously low 3.48% whereas previously they stayed near the national average sustained rate, indicating a problem in the accountability process.

Compared to other cities of similar size?
By using the annual reports that some cities issue, the following comparisons could be made.

Seattle:
Pop Est 582,454: PD Size 1,200
2007 Use Of Force Complaints: 124 (10.3 per 100)

San Jose:
Pop Est 929,936: PD Size 1,400
2007 Use Of Force Complaints: 117 (8.4 per 100)

Washington DC:
Pop Est 581,530: PD Size 3,800
2007 Use Of Force Complaints: 101 (2.7 per 100)

San Fransisco:
Pop Est 744,041: PD Size 2,100
2007 Use Of Force Complaints: 186 (8.9 per 100)

Why are Seattle's numbers so different?

There is an distrurbing trend developing if you take the time to compare monthly accountability reports in the city of Seattle to each previous year. Previously, a vast majority of complaints in Seattle were processed through the civilian led Office of Professional Accountability which would investigate roughly 90% of complaints and refer 10% of complaints to administrative officers for a discretionary finding which didn't involve an investigation. This changed towards mid 2007 after a change in OPA management, as seen below:

OPA Investigation vs Administrative Discretionary Findings 2005-2008

Which led to an increase in the number of exonerations, as seen below:

Sustained/Unsustained Findings From 2005 to 2008

So, clearly there is a problem with police misconduct and use of force within Seattle that is not being addressed by Seattle's system of accountability and officer discipline to this day. In fact, the problem appears to be getting worse and it's not because police officers are in any real or inordinate danger while working on the streets of this city.

Seattle Police Brass Excusing More Misconduct

An interesting trend appears to be developing at the Seattle Police Department's "Office of Professional Accountability" (SPD OPA), which is the civilian oversight mechanism for police misconduct investigations. Not only are complaints taking longer to investigate, but it appears as though fewer complaints are making it to the actual investigation process itself. Instead, more complaints than ever appear to be getting dismissed out-of-hand by SPD brass.

We took a look at the current and past OPA statistics and noticed this trend pretty quick because the change in data was startling. First, here's a graph showing the OPA findings from the past few years.

OPA Findings From 2005-2008

Of course, the SPD OPA categorizes how it handles and finds complaints in a number of somewhat confusing ways, as you can see above, but ultimately there are two different ways it goes about establishing a finding and two different basic findings it can come up with: The OPA can investigate the complaint or defer to a supervising officer's discretionary finding and the OPA can either find the complaint as being valid or invalid.

Now, first, let's look at the resulting findings of complaints over the same time period:

Simplified OPA Findings From 2005 to 2008

As you can see, the general trend in findings over the first few years was fairly static, ranging around 30% sustained, until 2007 and 2008 where the trend plummeted to only 11% of complaints being found sustained (of those a vast majority being managerial complaints like incorrectly reporting hours for example). So, why are complaints being dismissed far more often?

Well, while many people have so little trust in the OPA complaint system that they now bypass it and go straight to a lawyer in cases of serious misconduct, yet there may be another factor in play as well... It may have something to do with this:

OPA Investigation vs Administrative Discretionary Findings 2005-2008

As you can see, there has been a very drastic shift in the ratio of complaints that are actually investigated by the OPA and the number of complaints that are simply dismissed by administrative officers like Lieutenants and Captains as "administratively unfounded" or "administratively exonerated" without investigation. Previously, a vast majority of complaints, around 90%, were handled by the OPA with very few being discretionary, but strikingly the trend upended with complaints being deferred to the discretion of the brass in nearly 60% of cases so far this year and only 40% being investigated by the OPA.

Interestingly enough, this trend seems to have started when the OPA Director was replaced near the middle of last year and the entire OPA office was reshuffled. This was also around the time that the civilian oversight portion of the OPA system, the OPA Review Board, made a scathing report that alleged interference in investigations by the police chief and questioned the trustworthiness of the entire OPA process. The outgoing OPA director also expressed concerns about the future of the oversight system but her replacement has been a steadfast defender of the police department.

As a result of the accusations made by the OPA Review Board the entire board has also been replaced this year, with their last report on the status of the OPA system being kept secret because it was reportedly a scathing review that would have left the city open to litigation by the Seattle Police Officer's Guild. It is appearing more and more likely that the city and police department are responding to problems with the oversight and disciplinary system by making it less effective and more secretive than ever and staffing it with members who will keep quiet about problems with the process.

Needless to say, the results of all the changes to the oversight system are clear, whether they are intentional or not. More and more often, complaints are being dismissed without review or oversight and this appears to have a direct correlation with both the changes in management for the civilian oversight system in Seattle and the news coverage last year of failures within the oversight process.

While the city has made pains to publicize the changes to the system that help ensure officers found to have committed acts of misconduct are disciplined, it's becoming clear that the system has been altered to find fewer officers guilty of misconduct in order to bypass those new rules. Sadly, this means that the OPA system of civilian oversight in Seattle is looking more like a PR front that covers up cases of misconduct for the city's embattled and scandal ridden police department than a properly working and transparent civilian oversight system designed to clean up the police department. The end result will be even more distrust between civilians and the police as misconduct and brutality rates continue to climb due to a lack of consequences for misconduct.

Note: Since the 2008 statistics are only based on mid-year reporting statistics, all previous year statistics were taken from the same mid-year reporting time-frame for that year for accurate comparisons.

Man Shocked 12 Times By SPD Files Suit

Jury selection began Tuesday for the civil rights lawsuit filed by Michael Watson against several Seattle Police officers over an arrest that occurred during the February 2005 Mardi Gras in Seattle’s Pioneer Square.

The incident arose over allegations of theft made by a reportedly aggressive street vendor against Watson, who was accused of stealing a $5.oo string of beads. Officers claim that they overheard the dispute and when they warned Watson to pay the vendor he became belligerent and punched an officer in the chest. Officers then claim they were forced to wrestle him to the ground and arrest him for theft, resisting arrest, and assaulting an officer.

However, Watson claims that he was struck from behind by one of the officers after he used an obscenity in reaction to being accused of theft which caused him to fall into the officer he was accused of striking and then he claims officers needlessly used a stun gun on him over a dozen times during the arrest and suffered a ruptured disc, bruised ribs, and a shoulder injury caused by the officers.

While police officers, one of which an alleged expert in the use of Tasers, claim that they didn’t use their stun guns on Watson nearly as many times as was suggested, medical reports taken from Watson’s visit to Harborview Medical Center a day after he was arrested and posted bail record at least 12 individual burn marks on his torso and back. According to records, the charges against Watson were later dismissed in Seattle Municipal Court.

Allegations of excessive use of force being tied to counter-accusations of assault on an officer are fairly common, and sometimes contentious as the use of an assault on an officer charge along with obstruction and resisting arrest have long been termed as “the trinity” by police officers and as “cover charges” by defense attorneys and civil rights lawyers. Several recent cases in Seattle highlight the problems with accusations of assault on an officer, some of which resulted in losses by the city of Seattle in federal court.

Hayes & Lujan Case: Officers claim that Hayes tackled an officer who was arresting Lujan over a jaywalking incident but witnesses talking to journalists after the event made no claims to that effect. Hayes was ultimately found guilty of assaulting an officer anyway.

Bradford Case: Bradford ultimately won a wrongful arrest and use of force case against the city of Seattle even after an officer who reviewed the arresting officer's report tried to change it to indicate that Bradford had hit the officer, when the arresting officer even admitted he hadn't.

DV-One Case: A local DJ was arrested and convicted of assaulting an officer when he was trying to find out why officers were arresting and throwing his daughter against a cruiser for jaywalking. The DJ and some witnesses claimed he didn't hit the officer when he was beaten by several officers, but he was still convicted of assaulting an officer.

Nix Case: Nix, in his 70s at the time, was brutally beaten and later ended up hospitalized after he nearly bled to death in jail from the injuries he sustained in the beating which included a ruptured spleen. Officers insist that the arthritic old man, of whom friends say had great difficulty walking, had "surprised them with his speed and strength" when he allegedly assaulted them. Nix and other witnesses claimed the officers never identified themselves before they started pummeling him in an alleyway during an alleged drug bust.

In each of these cases of use of force the charges of Assault on an Officer came under questionable circumstances or the charges were outright disproved and highlighted serious problems with officers embellishing reports without consequence. Certainly, though, with the large number of publicly visible cases of alleged assaults on officers, there must be an epidemic of violence against the police, which they often cite as being the reason for aggressive tactics against civilians during arrests.

A review of records supplied by the Seattle Police Department seem to indicate otherwise, in fact showing a remarkable downward trend in the number of assaults against officers and the level of violence alleged during those supposed assaults, as the following graph shows… police work is the safest that it’s been in years:
chart shows incidents of assault on an officer, injuries from incidences, and excessive use of force complaints

However, as can be seen, the number of excessive use of force complaints filed don't correlate to the number of reported incidences of assault on an officer... while incidences of assault against officers have drastically declined over the years, excessive use of force by officers has risen somewhat in comparison, showing that officer aggressiveness is not tied to any reduction or increase in incidences of assault against officers.

It should be noted that there has been a downward trend in citizen reporting of abuses as trust in the oversight system has eroded and reports have indicated that complaints are used to prepare defenses against lawsuits instead of disciplining problematic officers, as exhibited in both the Bradford case and this case where the people alleging abuse did not report it to the police due to mistrust or the advice of their lawyers, so the use of force trending is likely off. Irregardless, it's clear that working as a police officer in Seattle is safer than ever, thus the steadiness of use of force complaints remains baffling.

So, the city finds itself in the midsts of another excessive force lawsuit where problematic claims of assault on an officer as justification for excessive force have been called into question. If Seattle's private law firm hired on a no-bid contract to defend police officers against civil rights litigation lose this battle, it will be the seventh civil rights abuse case lost or settled by the city in the last 12 months. The case against the city on behalf of Mr. Watson is being handled by Seattle civil rights attorney John Kannin of Kannin Law and no details yet on start dates or expected duration.

Seattle Police Brutality Statistics

NOTE: For the latest police misconduct statistics, refer to the April 2009 National Police Misconduct Report or for realtime information on police misconduct refer to the National Police Misconduct News Feed on Twitter.

During the contentious contract negotiations between the city of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officer's Guild, representatives of the guild repeatedly asserted that the Seattle Police Department was one of the cleanest in the US, insisting that the complaints against officers were very low for a city of it's size as justification for why they deserved an unprecedented pay raise without having to accept police accountability improvements that had been suggested by the Police Accountability Review Panel.

Reviewing the reports from the Office of Professional Accountability and compiling the numbers paints a different picture of the Seattle Police Department, however. The numbers add up and appear to indicate that while Seattle's police department may not be the worst in the US, it's definitely not the cleanest... and it may be getting much worse.

A recent University of Chicago Law School study determined that the national average for complaints of excessive force against officers within mid-sized to large police departments was around 9.5 complaints per every 100 law enforcement officers according to the latest statistics available from the US Department of Justice and US Department of Labor.

The Seattle Police Department currently numbers around 1,200 sworn officers, so if they were to be better than average they would need to have less than 114 complaints of excessive force per year.

SPD OPA statistics for years 2005-2007:

2005 Use Of Force Complaints: 110 (09.1 per 100)

2006 Use Of Force Complaints: 112 (09.3 per 100)

2007 Use Of Force Complaints: 124 (10.3 per 100)

While statistically hovering around the average for 2005 and 2006, the brutality complaints against the SPD in 2007 clearly jumped higher than the national average. (additionally, this may be under-reported since civil rights lawyers in Seattle had started to advise clients against filing official complaints in use of force incidents because it was becoming clear the accountability system was flawed and biased).

The national average also maintains that departments generally sustain complaints of abuse and issue discipline in 8% of complaints made.

Percentage of abuse complaints sustained:

2005- 7.29%

2006- 6.53%

2007- 3.48%

Sustained complaints were halved in 2007, and even then those sustained complaints only resulted in one known actual disciplinary action; an early retirement with full pension that is currently being fought by the Seattle Police Officer's Guild. While one might first think this is a sign of a clean department, think again. It actually points to an apparent unwillingness of the police department to hold it's officers accountable for misconduct. (see more recent research into OPA records that discovered a shift from investigating complaints to discretionary findings here to see why sustained findings have dropped for use of force as well as all other complaints)

Because of the suddenness of the dramatic drop in sustained rates, the jump in number of complaints over the same time period, and the number of administrative exoneration that countermanded recommendations of disciplinary action by internal investigations means that the small number of sustained use of force complaints appears not to indicate that the department is "squeaky clean" but that the oversight and accountability mechanisms have failed. Recent news articles depicting problems with internal investigations and administrative exoneration appear to back this up as well on a per-case basis.

Those same stories of problematic accountability and investigatory mechanisms that were bypassed in the Seattle Police Department spurred the creation of two different panels (the SCCPAP and OPAPARP) that were tasked to review the civilian oversight program that was supposed to monitor police discipline and make recommendations to fix it. However, the resultant recommendations from both panels were fought by the police union and several were overturned or just dropped by the city. So it appears as though the numbers will only get worse, or they will just go unreported in the foreseeable future.

This dire prediction of the accountability program failing seems especially likely now since ex-police officer councilmember Tim Burgess has been dismantling the previous experienced civilian review boards and restaffing them with inexperienced candidates in order to make them less willing to go public with problematic findings like the previous members did when they identified problems and since the only real accountability proponent on the city council, Nick Licata, has been rumored to be considering retirement after his latest term on the council.

The numbers and recent developments make it clear that the problem with misconduct in the Seattle Police Department is getting worse, and is likely to continue getting worse into the foreseeable future. Stay safe out there, because it's becoming clear that the system in place now is only designed to protect the city from lawsuits and bad cops from discipline, it is no longer designed to help protect citizens from bad cops.

Comparisons that were available for other cities don't stack up well for Seattle:

Seattle: Pop Est 582,454: PD Size 1,200
2007 Use Of Force Complaints: 124 (10.3 per 100)


San Jose: Pop Est 929,936: PD Size 1,400
2007 Use Of Force Complaints: 117 (8.4 per 100)

Washington DC: Pop Est 581,530: PD Size 3,800
2007 Use Of Force Complaints: 101 (2.7 per 100)

San Fransisco: Pop Est 744,041: PD Size 2,100
2007 Use Of Force Complaints: 186 (8.9 per 100)

UPDATED: 09/06/08- referenced newer sets of statistics.