Latest Seattle City Police Accountability Reports Declare Success, But Reveal Failures

I've been focusing more and more on national issues of police misconduct lately... maybe all the failures in Seattle are part of the reason why... for example:

The Seattle Police Department's Office of Professional Accountability (the collective name for the department's internal investigations unit and the civilian police oversight system in Seattle) has actually been busy for once... Though not productively, as you'll see in a minute.

The SPD OPA issued several reports last month, the first, interestingly enough, is a report on the progress towards implementing recommendations(pdf) made by two separate "blue ribbon" panels to improve the accountability system. Of course, the city says all of them are in place or progressing forward...

Of course, that's not the case in reality as borne out by all the publicized, and some not so publicized, problems the department has had lately with their attempts to discipline officers being overturned on appeal by the union.

One of those recommendations was that any officer caught lying would be terminated. But, so far, that's proven to be far from the case thanks to language added by the union that made this unenforceable. That's proving to be the case lately... of the three officers who have been disciplined on that new rule, two officers have successfully overturned disciplinary actions taken against them and a third is currently in the process of appealing his, with all expectations being that he'll win as well.

The next problematic recommendation that the city says is working like a charm concerns a 180 day limit the department has for investigating complaints of misconduct. Once those 180 days is up, any findings of misconduct are automatically exonerated unless the union agrees to extend the deadline... which would be like asking a student in detention if he would agree to stay if he had the option to leave early.

As you can guess, the union never agrees to extend the deadline... and the last we heard from the OPA the average time for an investigation to complete is 173 days. Which, as you could imagine, means there are a few investigations that go over that 180 day limit.

In fact, based on recent OPA reports and the latest Seattle Police Officer's Guild newsletter(pdf), there have been 5 investigations that would have resulted in sustained findings but went past the 180 day limit. Two of those have already been overturned on appeal and 3 others are pending appeal... again, with all expectations being that those disciplinary actions will be overturned as well.

So... I guess those recommendation implementations aren't going as well as the OPA and the city are trying to lead us to believe in their reports.

Speaking of, a few of those changes utterly neutered the civilian review board, turning them into a public relations board for the police department, and apparently they've been doing a great job of it lately...

I say that because another report recently released was the OPA auditor's report on SPD relations with diverse communities(pdf) which, according to her, look really positive and shows that the community trusts the police more than ever before...

Guess they haven't been reading.

Oh well, so long as nobody comes crying to me asking why they weren't warned the next time a big police misconduct scandal breaks and the officers involved can't be disciplined like last time. After all, last year I predicted that these exact problems would start happening before that contract was even approved by the council.

...meh, maybe next time.

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.

Interim Police Chief Candidate May Have Trouble With Seattle's Police Union

Seattle Deputy Police Chief John Diaz

News has just been leaked late last night that Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has picked Seattle Deputy Police Chief John Diaz as the temporary replacement for Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske who has been picked by President Obama to be the next drug Czar.

However, there appears to be a catch. According to the Seattle Times, the Seattle Police Officer's Guild that represents Seattle Police Department's rank and file officers isn't happy with that pick and appears to have launched a behind-the-scenes mudslinging campaign against Diaz in an attempt to undermine the mayor's choice for the chief's replacement.

Upon looking at Diaz's 29 year history with the SPD though, I don't see any outward indication that he's done anything but toe the line in regards to the public relations front that Seattle and it's police department put forward during any police misconduct incident. In fact, he's often been the public face towards the press when questionable incidents occur and has always urged the media to defer to the department's internal investigations findings, even when those findings were called into question.

So, for the guild to put forward such an aggressive offensive against Diaz means there must be something different that happens internally that's quite different than the deferential demeanor that Diaz has displayed to the press in the past. That could be because, as assistant chief under Kerlikowske, Diaz had an important role in officer discipline.

But, given Kerlikowske's tendencies to overturn findings of misconduct given to him by his own internal affairs department, the Office of Professional Accountability, on a regular basis, it's hard to see how Diaz would have had much disciplinary contact with the rank and file officers in the first place, given that so few ever actually got disciplined.

None the less, the police union's efforts behind the scenes to undermine Diaz's character must be quite intense as Diaz has asked the mayor if he still wants him to accept the post in light of the guild's efforts. Indeed, the Times quotes an unnamed city official as saying that Sgt. Rich O'Neill, president of the Seattle Police Officers' Guild, has privately told Nickels the Guild has serious problems with Diaz.

One thing is clear though, I've not uncovered any indication of misconduct or corruption in Diaz's history with the Seattle Police Department. So, if the guild has a beef with Diaz, it doesn't appear to be because he's a dirty cop.

Whatever the case, this is one we'll have to keep an eye on, especially if the guild offers up their own choice as candidate to replace Kerlikowske and the mayor backs off from his choice of Diaz as interim chief.

You Will Never See Videos Of Police Brutality In A Seattle Holding Cell

While many people all over the world are now familiar with the case of Malika Calhoun thanks to the video (at top) that showed a King County Sheriff's Deputy assaulting the 15-year-old girl in a holding cell, some people still mistakenly assume that this video came from a Seattle holding cell.

(If you did, don't feel bad. Even one of Seattle's alternative news weeklies The Stranger made that mistake too).

It didn't, the video came from cameras set up in a SeaTac holding cell that is used by King County Sheriff Deputies, not a Seattle Police Department holding cell.

In fact, it would be impossible for you to see such a video if it showed Seattle Police officers abusing a detainee in a Seattle holding cell.

Why?

The reason you would never see a video of a Seattle Police officer assaulting a detainee isn't because a Seattle Police officer would never do such a thing. Nor is it because of privacy laws and contractual agreements that keep such records and recordings out of the public view. And no, it's not because the city's lawyers are so much better at convincing judges to keep such evidence out of the public view.

Quite simply, it's because there are no cameras in any Seattle Police Department precinct holding cells. In fact, as far as we know, there aren't any cameras anywhere inside any Seattle Police Department precinct.

So, if Malika Calhoun had been arrested by a Seattle Police officer and the same thing occurred, nobody would ever know and Malika would be facing charges of assaulting an officer for the beating she received. She would simply become another one of the nameless victims of police misconduct that never have their case make it to the light of day.

The city of Seattle has been trying to get cameras put into areas of Seattle police precincts where detainees might be held, interviewed, or transported for years now. But, progress has been slow due to opposition by the Seattle Police Officers Guild that has opposed the idea of cameras in precincts due to "privacy concerns". This has left the city and the Seattle Police Department struggling to figure out how to implement a policy governing the use of cameras in holding areas that the police union would agree to.

Unfortunately, as best we can currently tell, the current negotiations only cover cameras in holding cells themselves and do not apply to areas where detainees might be interrogated or moved... and the establishment of a policy that governs the use of cameras is still not finalized, which means the installation of such cameras may still be questionable given the current state of the economy even if there ever is a finalized agreement between the city and the police union.

In the meantime, rest assured that you'll never see a video of Seattle's finest beating on a teenage girl in a holding cell any time soon...

Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske May Be New Drug Czar

Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske is reportedly being considered for a cabinet-level position within the Obama administration, at least according to some unnamed sources. Those sources also hint that it appears as though Kerlikowske will be the next director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, or “drug czar”. (ABC News now says it has confirmed this. -02/11/09 11:49)

Admittedly, Kerlikowske has had quite a bit of bad press in Seattle, especially over his handling of police misconduct issues. Most criticisms cite a tendency for being lenient towards officers who have had sustained findings of misconduct as determined by internal investigations performed by the Seattle Police Department’s Office of Professional Accountability (SPD OPA).

Those criticisms came to a head in 2007 after an officer who was accused of severely beating an African American man outside of a local venue received a promotion instead of discipline. That result came about because the internal investigation into the complaint, which originally sustained a finding of excessive force, had run over a 180 day limit that results in an automatic finding of exoneration when expired. The city later settled a civil case over that beating.

Another well-publicized case in May of 2007, involving officers accused of lying and planting drugs, implicated Kerlikowske with accusations that the chief interfered in the subsequent investigation of the officers when he overturned recommended disciplinary recommendations for those officers. This case in particular pushed the mayor and city council to form panels to review the police oversight and disciplinary process. That resulted in a series of recommendations that were only partially implemented a year later… one of the dropped recommendations was that the 180 day cap on investigations be lifted.

There have been many upon many other cases where the chief has been accused of showing an obvious bias towards officers accused of abuses and misconduct though, as illustrated in part of the Seattle Post Intelligencer’s “Strong Arm of the Law” series of reports on undisciplined misconduct and findings of dishonesty that were reduced by the chief within the Seattle Police Department that ran in early 2008.

Kerlikowske has also been unabashed at times about defending officers who have been accused of excessive force, even when damning video footage accompanied such complaints. One such example was during an interview he did with KING 5 reporters over allegations of excessive force that he overturned. While viewing a tape of one of his officers hitting a man who was shackled to a chair in a hospital with his nightstick the chief remarked the the officer “clearly (used force) on a person who had already been fighting, to keep him in line from kicking the person who was walking by. I just think that's very obvious." ...after he had been handcuffed to a chair.

As for his stance on drug law enforcement, he has taken a stance against a referendum that made simple possession of marijuana the lowest priority for the law enforcement, which still passed by popular vote. Yet he has also indicated that he supports the notion that offering non-violent drug addicts treatment is a better alternative to incarceration, though not clearly nor forcefully so.

However, as a possible indicator of the direction he would take as drug czar, there was also the disturbing case of a raid performed on a medical marijuana clinic in Seattle that also resulted in police confiscating patient files and computers containing medical information... even though medical use is permitted in Washington state. The confiscation of personal medical records and disregard for the privacy of citizens that this case showed is certainly a dangerous precedent if such tactics were employed on a federal scale.

While community and drug law activists all say that, even though Kerlikowske is not amenable to drug law reforms, he is still likely to be an improvement over previous drug czars who have been aggressive about ramping up America’s war on drugs, there are signs that he could take that war in new directions that aren't so pleasant either.

But, should Kerlikowske’s abysmal reputation for lax discipline within his department and lack of respect for privacy laws be a detractor for his nomination to a cabinet-level post within the Obama administration?

Well, first of all, King County Executive Ron Simms’ abysmal record of tolerating human rights abuses within his own jail and the sharp criticisms over the mistreatment of animals in the county shelters didn’t stop Obama from nominating him to a high-level post within his administration, so why should a police chief who has been accused of turning a blind eye to police misconduct be a concern?

Snarking aside, Much of Kerlikowske’s reputation for overturning findings of misconduct and choosing to go against disciplinary recommendations made by internal affairs investigators may be due to issues well beyond the chief’s control.

An honest appraisal would find that his hands have been tied, in at least some cases, by a very aggressive and strong police union and a very biased civil service review board that consistently overturns disciplinary actions taken against police officers when they appeal disciplinary actions with the help of the aggressive police union in Seattle.

The result has been a number of penalties against the city that cost a great deal of money and an increasing number of precedents that favor the police union’s efforts to overturn findings of misconduct. This ultimately forced the chief to choose between imposing disciplinary findings he knows will be overturned and cost the city money in the process... or imposing very relaxed standards within the department to avoid tension with the strong police union that had previously imposed a vote of no confidence against him early in his term as chief.

It’s possible he had little choice but to let his officers run rampant over the civil rights of Seattle’s citizens, but he didn’t have to be such a staunch defender of those actions if he took them out of necessity. Nor did he have to be so ambivalent about disturbing charges of racial profiling against his department that still persist to this day.

But, ultimately, Obama will do what he wants. I know a small voice like mine wouldn’t make a difference in his choices for filling his cabinet with people who have questionable civil rights records or who have tolerated so much misconduct by those in their charge… so, I think I have no choice but to join the chorus in saying that while Obama could have done better than this choice… he also could have done a lot worse.

...But, I still wonder why I feel disturbed about this choice when I recall that similar things had been said about our previous president's choices and actions when he first got into office as well... that, well, at least he could have done worse as well.

On The Web And In Seattle

California Blogger Stalked Over Article About Officer's Sexual Assault Charges

Five Before Midnight, a blogger in Riverside California who covers the inner-workings of the local government and police conduct issues, seems to be the target of a creepy stalker because of the in-depth coverage written about the Riverside officer who is facing trial over multiple charges of sexual abuse... It's disturbing, to say the least.

Bloggers who cover issues of police brutality and misconduct are often the target of police harassment and several have shut down in just this last year (as I wrote about here). Earlier this year I received death threats from officers in Chicago and a police officer in Iowa calls me "The Enemy" on his personal blog...

It's a disturbing trend and officers seem to be pretty free to harass critics in an attempt to silence stories of misconduct with impunity. So FBM definitely has our support and I hope the harassment stops soon.

Seattle Councilmember Nick Licata Seeks Alternatives To Spending Millions On A New Jail, Mayor Against The Idea

The city of Seattle has been in the process of determining where to build a new 7 acre jail in the face of the expiration of a contract between the city and King County over the use of the King County Jail to house detainees for the city. The renewal of the contract is under question as older King County projections stated that there would be insufficient room to house detainees by 2012, citing increases in jail populations as the cause.

Some of these projections have been called into doubt, but the push towards making it's own jail has Seattle set to spend 4.5 million next year to study site viability, $110 million estimated for construction, and $19 million a year to operate it's own jail. Surely a daunting set of numbers while facing an oncoming recession.

However, Councilmember Nick Licata has made a suggestion in his latest newsletter, Urban Politics, that might save the city the bulk of that money through the use of diversionary programs that offer non-violent offenders the choice between jail or rehabilitation... a program apparently based on an existing small-scale trial that has seen a very successful 82% success rate in keeping offenders from re-offending.

Licata, however, is facing opposition from the mayor in his attempts to get a proviso put on the budget for next year's jail assessments in order to give this idea a shot, even though the provisio wouldn't affect jail planning. The council is set to vote Monday on the budget action that appears to be in everyone's best interests.

Seattle Police Declare Open Season On Cyclists

Earlier this year the SPD refused to press charges against a motorist who ran over a Critical Mass bicyclist in what the riders described as a fit of road rage, but SPD officers did arrest several of the cyclists who chased down the motorist when he tried to flee the scene and started beating on his car and allegedly hit him once with a bike lock.

Well, seems that the cyclists might have had reason to be angry at the police for the apparent act of selective enforcement. The Stranger's Jonah Spangenthal-Lee has an article this week about cyclists who have been complaining of police harassment and officers who ticket them when they have been hit by cars pulling out of parking lots while they were on a stretcher being taken away.

That article apparently sparked other harassed riders to step forward and give even more accounts of SPD officers showing an aggressive bias against cyclists in a city that supposedly prides itself in being bike friendly.

The bulk of stories are seeming to suggest that the SPD is sending a message to motorists that cyclists are fair game for a hit and run when that road rage has got you down.

October In Seattle

Sorry I've been out of commission for a few days, there's a bunch to catch up on locally so let's get started...

Latest OPA Reports

Jonah, over at The Stranger's blog, posted about some of the rare sustained findings that he found in the September Seattle Police Department Office Of Professional Accountability (SPD OPA) report, including one that found a dispatcher had sex with a 16 year old runaway after supplying him with alcohol.

I was surprised that nobody mentioned the August OPA report, which is also interesting because it details a sustained finding of excessive use of force against an officer and specifically states that the officer was uncooperative with the investigation and mislead investigators.

That's interesting because, according to the new contract between the city and officer's union, any sustained finding of an officer misleading investigators during an internal investigation is suppose to lead to an automatic termination of employment... but we've not heard of any officers being fired during that period of time and nobody has covered that story.

Guess that contract isn't working out as advertised, just like I said it wouldn't.

Tacoma Washington Judge Decides On Police ID Demands
According the The Seattle Times, a Tacoma judge ruled that people are not obliged to show their identification on demand to officers that demand it just because they demand it. As you might recall, we reported on the case of Legrand Jones, a lawyer from Olympia Washington, who was fighting charges that were brought against him when he refused to show officers his ID when they demanded it while he was at an anti-war protest. The judge cited that an officer has to have cause to detain someone, and demanding ID is a form of detaining someone.

The police also charged the lawyer with trespassing because he was NEAR a fence that had a no trespassing sign on it... the same judge dismissed that charge saying that one would have to be on the other side of the fence to be trespassing.... duh.

When Civilian Oversight Isn't
According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Mayor Greg Nickels wants to put police department's civilian auditor under his administration in the department of executive administration instead of allowing that position to continue being independent as a non-city government contractor through the office of policy and management.

The obvious problem here is that the civilian auditor would cease to be a civilian and become a city employee, and thus inherit the appearance of bias that comes with such a role. This is particularly problematic because, as I reported earlier this year, all other roles within the civilian oversight process have already been replaced this year and the auditor is the last person left standing with any clear experience and the director has been replaced with someone who has a penchant for defending the police, which already lends the appearance of bias. The last thing the city should do, if it values the public perception of it's police department's trustworthiness, is to fold the auditor into the mayor's payroll.

The Dangers Of Consolidating Jail Services
Finally, according to KING 5 News, King County Executive Ron Sims is trying to find ways to save money while the county budget faces a record shortfall, but his latest proposal for cuts at the jail may end up costing more.

While most are arguing on the basis of travel costs that would increase if all bookings were done in the KCCF instead of at both the KCCF and Regional Justice Center in Kent, there is also the increased likelyhood of intake screenings being overwhelmed, which would increase the likelyhood of detainees who need medical care being overlooked, which is one of the US DOJ findings the jail was blasted for last year.

With the county already facing legal action from the US DOJ and a class action civil suit over failures to provide adequate medical care to detainees, this move may cost them even more than they think.

Seattle Police Union May Be Skirting Campaign Finance Laws

Police unions have a very unique position in American politics due to the combination of power they can wield as a collective bargaining organization, the authority each member can wield as a police officer, the influence a police organization has that comes with the title of their office, and the influence they wield on elections with their endorsement activities during campaigns. In a sense, police unions are uniquely positioned to be the only union in the world that can actually control those who manage them and can directly influence the laws that govern them. If only for these reasons alone, it's important to hold these powerful agents of political power to the rules that govern how they may participate in the electoral process.

Prior to 2006, the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild, Seattle’s police union representing over 1000 uniformed officers, participated in campaign finance activities through a statewide political action committee for police officers called the Washington Council of Police and Sheriffs (WACOPS) which raised $102,733 in 2004 and $98,450 in 2006 for various campaigns and had registered under full financial disclosure laws as required for organizations that raise more than $5,000 in an election cycle.

According to the campaign report filing made by COMPAS to the Washington State Public Disclosure Committee, in 2006 the guild registered its own PAC under the name of the Council of Metropolitan Police and Sheriffs (COMPAS) and the COMPAS PAC's reported funding was reported to be $145,835 for that year. That PAC was also registered under the full disclosure rules as required for an organization that raises more than $5,000 and the records show that this organization gathered most of its funds from two organizations, the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild and the King County Police Officer’s Guild and was registered to the same address as the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild.

In 2007 the guild formed yet another organization named the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild Political Action Committee (SPOG PAC) but this time registered that organization under the “mini reporting” exemption which is meant for small organizations that plan to only raise $5,000 or less AND only accept donations of $500 or less per donor, even though their last PAC raised much more than that. In 2007, the SPOG PAC raised nearly triple that limit, $14,638, in its efforts to get 3 sponsored candidates elected to Seattle City Council, of which it succeeded in getting 2 of them elected.

In 2008 the guild re-registered SPOG PAC as an ongoing PAC under the same mini-reporting rules , even though it raised more than that limit last year and had a prior PAC registered under full reporting rules in 2006, and raised $30,358 so far this year, all without any requirement to indicate exactly how it has raised or spent those funds as they would have under the full reporting requirements.

Who have they spent their money to support? How have they spent these funds? Who donated to their causes and how much did they donate? Such questions are important in this election cycle given the guild’s support of the Republican candidate for governor in the tight race between Dino Rossi and Democratic incumbent Christine Gregoire… but we can’t tell because the mini-reporting laws exempt them from having to report their activities.

Of course, it’s not that police related PACs are exempt from reporting laws, the King County Police Officer’s Guild PAC reports under the full reporting laws even though they only raised a little over $5,000 this year. The WACOPS, however, do still function but they may have also been attempting to skirt campaign finance laws by registering a second PAC, (WACOPPS) which shows its sole donor of about $112,151 so far this year to be WACOPS, thus shielding its list of donors as the original WACOPS is no longer listed.

We’re not sure why these two different police-related PACs are taking these steps to shield their donor lists and their expenditures because of the different methods they appear to be using to skirt Washington state campaign finance reporting laws and we’re not certain why they haven’t been called on it yet either, especially given the attention to campaign finance irregularities in this close and contentious election cycle.

UPDATE 10/22/08: A representative from SPOG PAC has verified to us that, even though they have registered under the less stringent "mini-reporting" rules, that they are still submitting the detailed reporting forms to the PDC that would have been required under full-reporting regulations, the links to which are not being published in order to protect the personal information of police officers who are the primary contributors to the guild's funds.

City Pays For Cop To Sue Civilians

In early July we reported on the case of Zsolt Dornay and how he is using tax payer funds to sue a man that he shot, along with four others who were involved in allegedly attacking him while he was off-duty, and in plain clothes, after he had allegedly hit a woman with his motorcycle and then threw her against a wall when his bike had been tipped over in 2006. Well, the story just got much more disturbing...

It's already a matter of public record that, after a lengthy investigation into the incident that included both the Seattle Police Department and an outside police department that was brought in after allegations were made that Seattle police were pressuring witnesses, prosecutors stated that no charges would be filed against the people who allegedly attacked the officer because the attack was justified given that it was done in response to the perceived danger that was posed to the woman the officer allegedly ran over and then assaulted.

Well, now the City of Seattle has reportedly paid at least $76,000 so far for a private law firm, retained under the city's contract with the Seattle Police Officer's Union to defend officers against civil rights suits, to sue these people in a civil suit on the officer's behalf. Which means, of course, that the officer and law firm would get the winnings, not the city or taxpayers.

Meanwhile, the civilians who have been named as defendants in that case have no such funding, they don't have a law firm paid for by taxpayer money. Indeed, some of them appear to be facing the nightmare scenario of going into court without any representation whatsoever to defend themselves against a multi-million dollar law firm that has received millions of dollars in taxpayer money defending misbehaving cops... simply because they cannot afford legal representation.

We know this, unfortunately, because one of those defendants contacted us, desperately trying to find out what to do since he cannot afford a lawyer. While we are currently trying to help him find a lawyer, it's a difficult endeavor considering he doesn't stand to win anything from defending himself against such a suit... a suit against him that he likely funded, ironically, with the very same taxes he paid to the city.

More appalling than this is the outrageous notion that the city would be funding a police officer's private lawsuit using taxpayer money after the defendants named in the lawsuit were found innocent by prosecutors who investigated the very same case. While, if this were a criminal case, the defendants could get a public defender, but since this is a civil suit, there is no such legal assistance available to defend against this city-funded attack.

How insanely unjust is it that a man who was found by government prosecutors to have legal justification for his actions on that night in 2006 to now face a private lawsuit financed by the city on behalf of the person who he was found to have legal justification to act against? A lawsuit that taxpayer can't even afford to defend himself against in a court of law?

It's absurd, it's unjust, and frankly, what the city is doing, with taxpayer money, should be considered a criminal offense in it's own right!

Who Will Watch The Watchmen Now

When three ex-Seattle police officers formed VIEVU with the idea to develop a small wearable camera for police officers that would help reduce the number of false misconduct accusations against police officers and provide them with a useful tool to gather evidence while on the job, it's unlikely that they imagined that the most resistance to their idea would come from their peers and old coworkers at the Seattle Police Department.

The VIEVU is a three ounce rectangular wearable wireless audio/video recording device that is capable of storing up to 4 hours of video that supposedly cannot be manipulated or erased. Approximately the shape of an older style pager, the device can be clipped on a uniform or belt and allows the officer to record potentially volatile interactions or situations from his or her own perspective. The device cannot be tampered with and the recordings cannot be modified even after they are downloaded from the devices onto a central computer system.

In this regard, the VIEVU is unlike dashboard mounted cameras used in police cruisers that only point forward and have been known to miss recording disputed police interactions, such as the case of Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes who could be heard pleading for officers to stop beating him on a dash-mounted police camera that was not positioned to record the actual beating. So this could be a valuable tool that protects officers who have been wrongfully accused of misconduct and to hold officers accountable who do commit acts of misconduct.

However, the Seattle Police Officer's Guild has forced the Seattle Police Department to suspend it's testing of the VIEVU after it was used to help monitor an August 29th Critical Mass bicycle ride through the city of Seattle as a test of the portable recording system. When asked about the guild's problems with the device, Sgt. Rich O'Neill, president of the guild, cited privacy concerns along with the need for officers to undergo training and preparation for potential litigation as reasons for the guild's resistance to the camera.

O'Neill also argued, in an interview with the Seattle Times, that the devices may make it harder for officers to gather evidence in cases instead of making it easier. "If the officers have the cameras going all the time there could be a chilling effect on citizens and juvenile talking to the police. If they think the cops are videotaping all of their conversations they might not want to have their names or faces used." O'Neill was quoted as saying.

Surprisingly, the guild has an ally in it's argument against the cameras in the form of the ACLU of Washington State, headquartered in Seattle, Washington. In an interview taken before the guild stopped the department's testing of the device, Christina Drummond, the Technology and Liberty Project Director for the ACLU of Washington, cited similar concerns over the use of the device.

Are these concerns founded in an age where the common citizenry is told that there should be no expectation of privacy in public? Where workers in the private sector are allowed to be recorded by their employers while on the job and where the police themselves monitor citizens with CCTV cameras positioned on street corners and in public parks?

Why is it that a police officer should have a special expectation of privacy where the common citizen does not? Why is their supposed fear of accountability still taken seriously when they already have job security protections that most of us could only dream of, when it's already nearly impossible to fire a police officer for misconduct?

Now, it's certainly true that the implementation of such devices should be paired with a very well-thought out policy that dictates when and how the devices should be used, that prevent reviewing of recorded materials except for gathering known evidence or incidents that have received complaints. It does seem clear that there was little thought put into the testing performed at the SPD and there have been no mention of protocols that were given to officers that would govern how these devices were used or how information gathered by them would be protected from surreptitious review.

But such guidelines and restrictions already exist for the use of recordings made by the police from public CCTV systems and dashboard mounted cameras that already exist in their vehicles. Why have those technologies been praised by officers while they still resist putting cameras in precincts and the use of wearable recording devices?

In our present-day surveillance society, it's interesting that perhaps the very last bastion of privacy in America might very well reserved for the very same police officers that have been given the power and privileged of monitoring and recording the rest of us...

In the end it seems as though everyone will be left wondering if this technology will finally help us watch the watchers, or if the watchers will be only gaining yet another tool with which to watch us.

A New Wall Of Silence Around The SPD

The Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) is the internal investigations branch of the Seattle Police Department that is responsible for investigating allegations of misconduct. Part of the role within that department is community relations in order to build trust within the community for the police department and trust in the internal investigative process itself. Two recent reviews of the OPA found, among other things, that the OPA needs to do a better job of communicating with the public… How well have they done since those reports?

First, the OPA is supposed to issue a monthly report each month that details the findings for the previous month and gives a statistical summary of those findings and the number of investigations opened. However, the OPA is currently 3 months behind in issuing those reports with the latest report available being the one for June. Prior to hiring a new director towards the middle of last year, the department had been fairly consistent in issuing those reports but towards the end of last year the department fell behind. While they had appeared to catch up for a while, they have fallen behind again under the leadership of this new director.

The problem is not with the OPA being overburdened as the number of complaints opened has been lower this year than previous years, unfortunately in large part because so few trust the process anymore after several high profile cases of officers escaping discipline.

Also, as I reported here in an exclusive story, the OPA have not even been performing investigations as often as they used to. In fact they have only investigated 40% of allegations this year and instead allowed SPD officers to make summary findings without investigation 60% of the time, in previous years they would investigate an average of 90% of allegations made. Of course, this has impacted the rate at which officers have been found guilty of misconduct, (previously 28%-30% rate, now only 11% of findings are sustained), but it has not appeared to have made them more open with the public, in fact they grown strangely silent instead.

Earlier this year the civilian oversight review component of the OPA, the OPARB, had issued a report to city council that was sharply critical of the OPA process and had warned it was on a track to failure but that report was kept secret due to civil litigation worries on the part of the city who worried it would prompt the police union to sue. Since then the OPARB members have been replaced with other members and has not issued any new reports.

In fact, the last reports issued were from the OPA auditor in April of this year, nearly 5 full months ago. Furthermore, there have been no publicized community outreach meetings by the OPA and, in fact, if you go to the OPA home page and click on their “Community Outreach” link, this is what you get:

Clearly the OPA is no longer interested in reaching out to the public, nor are they interested in increasing transparency into the internal investigation and disciplinary process as was called for by the SCCPAP in their report made to the city council about the OPA process and what was needed to improve relations between the police and the public.

Instead, this new and increased lack of transparency is deeply disturbing because of the apparent drop in the number of cases that the OPA is actually investigating which has led to a drop in the rate of sustained findings. There are clearly problems within the OPA and the Seattle police department itself, and apparently the city seeks to hide that fact behind a new wall of silence.

UPDATE 09/09/08 13:39 - The SPD OPA finally released their monthly report for July shortly after this article was published.

Tim Burgess Wages War On... Social Disorder?

Seattle city councilmember Tim Burgess has recently released his plan to combat "social disorder" within Seattle. While admitting that crime rates in the city are the lowest that they have been in several decades, he has come up with a new way to justify a call for more aggressive police tactics and additional hires for the most expensive police force within the state... that justification appears to be something called "social disorder".

There's quite a bit I could say about this plan, but Blogging Georgetown beat me to it with an excellent post about councilmember Burgess' plan that I would be really hard-pressed to add to in any meaningfully worthwhile way. However, there is one specific section of this plan that caused me more pause than any other and it's one I think needs a bit more attention than the rest.

First, this is an interesting item within his plan because he is proposing that the police should be used to assertively enforce a nebulously subjective idea of "social order" instead of enforcing the law. The concern, of course, is that this "social disorder" isn't quantified. Is Tim demanding that police continue criminalizing symptoms of social disorder like homelessness? Perhaps he would also like a harsher response to any acts of social disorder such as protests, like the police did to the October 22nd group? This concept of "social disorder" is not objective, there are no defining parameters or any laws that define this term, so to use it as justification for an "assertive police response" should cause a bit of concern. If not only from a civil rights perspective, but also from a financial perspective as Seattle has had to pay out legal costs for such "social disorder" enforcement efforts in the past.

Secondly, it's this call for more assertive police and for the city government to support proactive policing itself. It's assumed that Tim is talking about this kind of proactive policing where officers are trained to use aggressive tactics to crack down on people that they suspect might commit a crime at some point in the future based on subjective and error-prone profiling techniques that have gotten them into trouble in the past. This also seems to be a subtle call on the council to stop pushing for better systems of accountability within the police department which has been increasingly lax in regards to investigating complaints of abuse and misconduct on the part of Seattle police officers during this year. Basically it appears to be a call for the city to ignore police abuses in support of more aggressive tactics.

Putting both of these together would run contrary to public calls for improved accountability and reduced use of problematic "proactive" police tactics like the use of stand-alone obstruction charges. All this in response to a mere perception of increased "social disorder", but not any increase in crime rates. It's a big risk to take in response to a subjective perception instead of an objective fact, especially when you factor in the most likely reason for such a perception, that being the rapid increase in more affluent residents in the city due to booming development and reduced affordable housing. While the city is actually doing better in terms of crime rates, more people who are used to living in suburbs are experiencing the culture shock of living in an urban area.

While many items in Tim's plan have merit, especially the use of mental health professionals to help the mentally ill instead of just tossing them in jail, there are some problems with what Tim is using a justification for these calls for more assertive and proactive police in a city that has been battered by persistent stories of police misconduct. Overall, this appears to be a very questionable demand for more police powers and more hires in the current circumstances of reduced crime rates and persistent misconduct issues within the department and I think Tim should reconsider this demand in what otherwise appeared to be a fairly reasonable plan. In the very least, we hope Tim takes some time to be VERY specific about exactly what he's asking for, and why.

UPDATE 08/27/08 - Apesma's Lament also has a great post put up about Burgess' war on "Social Disorder" as well, go check it out.

About The Seattle Public Safety Civil Service Commission

The city of Seattle was recently forced to rehire a police officer who was charged with felony harassment and then plea bargained down to a misdemeanor harassment conviction after a jury deadlocked over an incident where the officer was accused of barging into the home of his ex-wife, shoving her, and then threatening her boyfriend while off-duty. Responses to the story both in the Seattle Post Intelligencer's message board and in the blogosphere have been pretty contentious with many Domestic Violence activists roundly condemning the decision by the Seattle Public Safety Civil Services Commission that forced the city to rehire the officer after he appealed the firing.

With rates of domestic violence involving police officers being higher than average when compared to the general population and many charges of bias during investigations into domestic violence accusations that involve police officers, this tends to be a very contentious issue. Many are now questioning just how much control the city has over it's embattled police force when the chief can't even make decisions about which officers to fire, let alone discipline.

While it's reasonable to expect that, before being convicted, any person should expect to be treated as innocent until proven otherwise... it's also true that in the private sector employees can be fired for just about any reason and often are once they have been accused of a crime. It's also true that problematic or criminal police officers can pose very serious and unique risks to society that ordinary citizens don't. Therefore, while the city's decision to fire the officer after he was accused but before he was convicted might have been wrong, it should have been able to put the officer on leave or administrative duty until the court outcome had been decided and then make a decision on his employment status.

However, the Seattle Public Safety Civil Service Commission apparently didn't give the city that option, stating instead that even after the conviction of a misdemeanor harassment charge the city shouldn't have been able to fire the officer and must give in to the officer's request to be rehired. Of course, this isn't the first time the commission has forced the city to rehire problematic officers and we've had a difficult time finding any cases where the commission didn't favor police officers who appealed disciplinary actions taken against them when appealed.

So, who are these commissioners, why is it that they favor police officers so heavily, and how is it that they have so much power over the city in regards to it's ability to discipline officers?

According to it's website, The Public Safety Civil Service Commission is made up of four people, one is appointed by the mayor, one by city council, one by the police union, and one by those other three members. As a result of the latest appointments, most have either some background as police officers or strong associations with police groups:

• Herb Johnson was appointed by Mayor Nickels and has served in the Seattle Police Department for 30 years both as an officer and as a temporary police chief.
• Joel Nark was appointed by the Police Guild and is currently a patrol officer in the Seattle Police Department.
• David Brown was appointed by the city council and sits on the board of directors of the Seattle Police Foundation which is a non-profit group formed after 9-11 with the stated goal of supporting the Seattle Police Department and it's officers. (note: the site lists his term as ending on 12/2007, but no new member was mentioned and the site was last updated on 4/2008)
  
• Mary Effertz appears to be the only member that doesn't have close ties to the police department that would bring up questions of bias. She previously worked for the city of Seattle in it's office of Civil Rights and taught journalism classes.

So, clearly, officers who appeal disciplinary actions by the city can likely expect some pretty preferential treatment by the commission, but how much authority does this commission have over the city in regards to how it manages it's police force?

Well, according the the commission's guide, the commissions decisions are binding and the city must comply unless it appeals to the Washington State Supreme Court. However, there are also other channels through which an officer can appeal disciplinary actions, which might be confusing to the average citizen who has few rights in regards to employment rights when compared to a police officer which would be expected to be held to a higher standard, but apparently isn't.

So, while many are venting their frustrations over this latest incident of the city's apparent unwillingness to discipline officers, in this case the deck is clearly stacked against the city, rendering it nearly unable to manage it's own police force... But, ultimately, it's still the city's fault for stacking the deck against itself by appointing apparently biased individuals to a commission that was meant to ensure that disciplinary actions against public employees were fair and unbiased.

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.

The Governor Was Carded... So What?

The big news making the rounds today is about Washington state's Governor Christine Gregoire being turned away from an Olympia bar because she didn't have her ID with her when she, her compliment of political friends, and police escort went to have a few after an event.

Apparently, this news is so important that some MSM outlets have even posted the story that criticizes the hapless doorman multiple times on their sites, though generally just repeating each other verbatim with nothing new to add:

• The Olympian
  
• Associated Press
• Seattle Post Intelligencer
• Seattle Post Intelligencer Blog
• KING 5 News
• The Seattle Times
  

The stories all state that the governor was a good sport about the incident but the press makes a big stink about it and the stories end with the owner apologizing and saying that his part-time bouncer might need to have some additional training... Really?

Well, aside from trying to figure out why this event being given such wide ranging and prominent coverage when there are better things to cover, (such as the very pertinent complaints raised during the public meetings on the city's efforts to build it's own jail), it is curious that reporters haven't offered any real reasons why bouncers are so cautious that they'd even card your 90 year old grandma or prominent political figures and pat them down before entry.

If you want to know why, just look at stupid political stunts that use the police and justice system to make political points, like Seattle's "Operation Sobering Thought" and other opportunistic police harassment of nightclubs for instance. Such politically motivated stings that employed very questionable tactics and resulted in such shoddy arrests and episodes of harassment that they ended up embarrassing the city repeatedly but cost low-wage security staff countless hours of lost wages, thousands of dollars in legal fees, and the lasting reminder of an an arrest on their record... all so the city could make a political point at their expense.

So, next time the press has a seizure over some poor doorman refusing to let someone in who doesn't have ID, think back to that last shameless "tough on crime" political stunt you supported. After all, why go through the punishment of being dragged through the justice system and being left with nothing but misery, EVEN IF THEY WIN, (none of the people arrested in that sting have been convicted by the way) just for the convenience of some politician, your bar's patrons, or even your butt-covering boss?

How Many Lawsuits, Seattle?

The Seattle Times reported yesterday, (and that report has since been parroted nonstop elsewhere), that the city of Seattle has lost or settled three police misconduct lawsuits in the last year when they reported on the most recent settled lawsuit that involved a young lady who had to have reconstructive surgery after her encounter with the Seattle police in 2006.

Three?

Really?

Try again...

July, 2008
Brittany Beaulieu receives $115,000 settlement from the city over an incident where an officer slammed her face into the pavement resulting in a compound facial fracture when she was shouting legal advice to a friend who was being charged with DUI.

JUNE, 2008
The city pays out a $5,000 settlement for Brad Nebinger who accused SPD officers of roughing him up before transporting him the the King County Jail, where he was assaulted again by a jail guard (King County settled that case for $20,000)

May, 2008
Romelle Bradford wins $269,000 lawsuit over wrongful arrest and use of force when he was knocked to the ground by an SPD officer while he was working at a Boys and Girls Club event.

February, 2008
Seattle pays a $20,000 settlement to Aaron Claxton, a Boys and Girls Club counselor, who was repeatedly tasered and then left to sit handcuffed in his own driveway while SPD ACT officers, who pulled him over because they thought he didn't belong in the neighborhood, tried to think of what to charge him with. Ultimately he was charged with "obstruction" which the prosecutor promptly dropped due to lack of evidence.

November, 2007
Bogdan Mohora wins an $8,000 settlement from Seattle over an incident where he was arrested and detained merely for taking pictures of an SPD arrest in progress.

November, 2007
Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes wins a $185,000 settlement over an incident where SPD officers lifted and threw him to the ground by his crotch, brutally beat, repeatedly kicked, and then arrested him for asking an officer why he was citing his friend for littering when his friend put out a cigarette on the ground.

That is at least twice as many as you cited by my count and there is no sign that it's letting up either. In fact, as I hear it, there are several other lawsuits in progress against the city and it's police force, including:

• An incident where a pregnant woman was tasered in her car for refusing to sign a traffic ticket.
• another incident where a man arrested at an anti-war protest for allegedly throwing water on a pro-war protester was pinned to the ground and unable to breathe because officers pinned his arms under him so he couldn't comply with commands to put his arms behind him.
• also, the well known Post Alley incident has spurred a lawsuit against an off-duty SPD officer who shot an unarmed defense attorney, the city has set aside $46,000 to pay it's private law firm to defend him and help him with his counter-suit.
• and apparently a pending suit that includes the person who claims he used his cell-phone to photograph the Alley-Barnes beating and that SPD officers erased his camera-phone when he was arrested and then released for photographing the incident.

There are others as well... several it seems when looking through the federal court dockets... and this appears to starkly contradict the city's private law firm's attorney who told reporters that the relentless string of settled and lost civil rights suits against the city of Seattle were "just a fluke."

An inability to hold officers accountable for misconduct and then paying out the nose to hire private attorneys on the taxpayers dime to defend their behavior no matter what is not a fluke, it's a recipe for encouraging more misconduct, and this string of lawsuits that continues onward in the foreseeable future proves it.

Update: Looks like the Times fixed it by clarifying they were only talking about six-figure lawsuits... but it's still misleading later in the article as they talk about those suits as if they were the only ones that happened in the last 12 months.

Seattle Public Safety Committee Meeting Tomorrow

I just became aware of this a short while ago, so please pardon the short notice. The Seattle City Council's Public Safety, Human Services, and Education Committee is set to discuss some police accountability changes tomorrow (Tuesday, 07/15/08) during their meeting at 2:00pm on the 2nd floor of City Hall in downtown Seattle. Most notable of these proposed legislative items is CB116126 that would allow the public to participate in the negotiation process between the city of Seattle and the various police unions by allowing for public commentary and input 90 days prior to the commencement of negotiations between the city and the police guilds.

The ACLU of Washington State has already weighed in on this proposed bit of legislation by asking the council members to support the passage of this proposed legislation, saying that since the guild asks its members for input on what they want to get out of contract negotiations that it is only fair to allow the city's stakeholders (i.e. the taxpayers, voters, general public) to give the city some input on what they want to see come out of contract negotiations as well.

This change would hopefully go a long way towards trying to convince the city that it's important to include transparency measures in the police oversight process and fix the loopholes that were left during the latest highly secretive contract negotiations between the guild and the city. At the very least it would be a chance for those who have gone through the OPA process to tell the city what worked and what didn't work.

The Public Safety Committee agenda for tomorrow's meeting allows for public commentary for the first 20 minutes of their 2:00 session, but because of the late notice we are at least encouraging readers to send letters of support for measure CB116126 to members of that committee in advance of tomorrow's session.

To contact members of the committee who will take part in this session please send emails to:

Tim.Burgess@seattle.gov
Nick.Licata@seattle.gov
Bruce.Harrell@seattle.gov
Tom.Rasmussen@seattle.gov

Seattle Settles Yet Another Excessive Force Suit

According to KING 5 News today, the city of Seattle has agreed to pay Brittany Beaulieu $100,000 in a settlement over an excessive force lawsuit filed by her attorney, Allen Ressler, over an incident that occurred in April, 2006. The case was covered earlier this year in the Seattle Post Intelligencer's "Strong Arm Of The Law" series on Seattle police officers who were never disciplined despite findings of excessive force on the part of the police department's internal investigations unit, the "Office of Professional Accountability" (OPA). We also mentioned her story in our post about police brutality being a part of departmental policy.

The incident in question began when Beaulieu was shouting legal advice to a friend who had just been stopped for suspicion of DUI. An officer, who had a history of excessive force complaints, grabbed her from behind and performed a "Leg Sweep" after grabbing her arms which prevented her from halting her fall as her face slammed into the pavement, resulting in three facial fractures that required cosmetic surgery to correct.

A later complaint against the officer was sustained by the OPA, only to be overturned by the chief and then director of the OPA, Sam Pailca, who noted it as a "training issue" instead. The trainer who that officer was sent to reported that he felt the incident was the result of the officer not being forceful enough, even though the original OPA findings indicated that the amount of force used was more than necessary to affect the arrest of Beaulieu on charges of obstruction.

When asked about the settlement her attorney told reporters that while the settlement brings a close to Brittany's case, larger issues remain. "The police should not police the police", he says, noting that "the process is skewed now towards exonerating the officer." ...and we couldn't agree more.

As usual, the news item wrongly mentions that all 29 recommendations aimed at improving police accountability were adopted when, as we showed when comparing the newest contract with those recommendations, the proof shows that they were not adopted. As we said, this is a trend that should continue so long as the city refuses to take a serious look at how officers are encouraged to abuse citizens because the broken system cannot hold them accountable for their actions.

We wish Brittany all the best and hope this settlement helps her find closure with what must have been a very frightening and painful experience.

SPD Officer Shoots Unarmed Attorney Three Times And Then Sues Him

In June of 2006, off-duty undercover Seattle Police officer Zsolt Dornay, then member of an SPD "proactive policing" Anti-Crime Team (ACT), was driving his motorcycle down a dual-use pedestrian and vehicular alleyway behind Pike Place Market where several nearby taverns were sending their patrons home for the night at the time. Why the officer chose to drive through Post Alley at that time of night, in an area he was well familiar with, instead of nearby main roads is a matter of contention, but witnesses allege that he was gunning his engine in an aggressive manner as he drove through the crowd that numbered at least 75 to 100 people according to most witness accounts.

Post Alley, where the incident occurred, shown in center.

Witnesses allege that as he drove through the crowd he hit a female paralegal with his side mirror which sparked an argument between the woman and the plain-clothed off-duty officer and the woman put herself in front of his bike during the exchange. Witnesses also state at this time that the officer drove forward while the woman was hanging on to his windshield which then caused his bike to tip. At this point, witnesses state that the officer grabbed the woman and threw her forcefully against a nearby door which sparked the nearby crowd to grab the officer.

At this point witness testimony diverges as many witnesses who gave SPD officers testimony later recanted when interviewed by Kent Police investigators when they were brought in to investigate the matter. Some witnesses who later changed their story say their testimony was altered or pressured by SPD officers. Video evidence of what happened also appears to have been lost by the Seattle Police Department who stated to Kent Police investigators that there was no video taken despite there being several nearby cameras that were trained on the site where the attack took place. As a result, there appears to be no way to confirm whether the officer's story or all the witnesses are right about what happened that night.

But witnesses agree that, at this point, the officer was attacked by at least 4 people in the crowd that came to the woman's defense and, in the course of the attack, the officer fired his duty weapon 5 or 6 times into the crowd and shot a nearby unarmed defense attorney 3 times in the abdomen. Witness accounts vary, at worst they say the attorney's involvement was limited to trying to grab the officer to pull him off the woman, others say he never even touched the officer, but all accounts agree that nobody saw him punch or otherwise assault the officer who alleges that he fired into the crowd in self defense and shot the 52 year old lawyer because he was mortally afraid of the lawyer.

The incident drew a great deal of media attention because the officer in question, a second generation cop, had a previous history of problems in the department, and even a possible criminal past. As a result, in a rare step, the SPD turned to an outside department to investigate the incident, the results of which ended up with no charges filed as prosecutors stated that the crowd had some justification to interceded on behalf of the woman who was attacked by the officer.

The problems in this officer's past that prompted this rare move by the SPD include:

• In 1984 he was allegedly arrested and plead guilty to charges of 2nd degree burglary, 3rd degree theft, and criminal trespass as a juvenile.

• In 1991 he was allegedly arrested again and charged with attempting to elude officers in a Grays Harbor incident, the case was ultimately transferred to superior court at the defendant's request and no mention of the case exists in any records afterward. In fact, when questioned about his criminal history by the KIRO 7 news reporters that discovered these court records, the police department stated that the department has no knowledge of such records, nor did they have his initial application for employment or background check in order to ascertain whether these criminal incidents were mentioned on his application... Seems that they conveniently lost his file.

• In 1995 a sustained finding of conduct unbecoming and improper use of force was found against him in an off-duty road rage incident where he assaulted someone at gunpoint. The incident alleges that he chased another motorist for several miles to the victim's workplace while shouting obscenities and "flipping him off", he then held a gun to the victim's head and hit him several times with the gun while grinding his face into the pavement of a parking lot. He only lost 15 vacation days as a result of that sustained finding.

• In 2003 he was accused, along with one other ACT officer, in the widely publicized beating of a 57 year old homeless Native American (in the same area of Post Alley as the incident above). The victim, Nix, was beaten so badly that he nearly died four days later in jail when he collapsed in a shower from a lacerated spleen and several other severe internal injuries. He flat-lined at least twice before surgery that was needed after he nearly bleeding to death after being denied medical care in jail. Nix also alleged that after the beating officers paraded him in front of prisoners and allegedly issued a warning to them that "This is what happens when you mess with the Sgt. In charge of narcotics." Prosecutors dropped all charges against the victim after testimony from several witnesses, some who claimed officers came at them with their clubs and said "you want some of this?", indicated the officers attacked him so quickly he likely wouldn't have known that it was police officers who were beating him.

Photo taken of 65 year old Nix's injuries after a 2003 arrest by SPD ACT Officers

• In 2005 he was accused, along with two other ACT officers, of strip searching three black men, yanking on their testicles, and conducting an invasive body cavity search against policy. Findings partially sustained for strip-searching all three men in front of each other in the same room, a finding that resulted in "re-training".

• 2006: The Post Alley incident noted above.

Additionally, recent reports in the press concerning the possible racial bias of obstruction arrests indicate that this officer is reportedly 12th in the entire department of 1,200 in the number of controversial "stand-alone obstruction" charges issued, (local lawyers sometimes refer to these charges as "contempt of cop"). There have also been several other abuse complaints filed against this officer, though no others are known to have been sustained.

This year, the attorney Dornay shot 3 times filed suit against the officer. In a move highly reminiscent of the infamous SLAPP suits filed by the police guild in the 90's to frighten victims into not reporting abuse, the officer is filing suit against the attorney that he shot, in addition to another suit he filed against the people he alleges attacked him, at the expense of the city who retains a private law firm under a no-bid contract to defend officers against civil rights lawsuits. The city, in fact, has paid the private lawfirm $76,000 in taxpayer funds so far in it's effort to allow this officer with a checkered past to sue the unarmed civilian that he shot while off-duty.

Predictably, as a result, the officer has found himself placed in the media's eye yet again, giving the city of Seattle and it's problematic police department yet another black eye, and it's taxpayer citizens yet another hit in their pocketbooks in the process... more than this, we wonder, what will the toll be in human suffering next time.

The officer in question is still on the SPD payroll, reportedly now as a narcotics officer.

Sources for this story:
A Tale of Two Cops: Seattle Post Intelligencer
Witnesses Give Differing Views Of Fight In Post Alley: Seattle Post Intelligencer
Police Shooting Leads To Two Lawsuits: Seattle Post Intelligencer
Controversial Seattle Police Officer Files Civil Suit: The Stranger
Seattle Officer Accused Of Unecessary Force: KIRO 7 News
The Cops' Credibility Gap: The Seattle Weekly
Shielded From Justice: Human Rights Watch
Law Firm Gets Millions To Defend Cops: Seattle Post Intelligencer