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.

The Politics of Truth

In 2007, several incidents of police misconduct, including allegations that officers who lied were never punished, brought public outrage to a head in Seattle and prompted city officials to create 2 review boards to look into the Seattle Police Department's policies and methods of dealing with allegations of misconduct and disciplinary actions against officers.

The results of those efforts were touted and the city proudly declared that they implemented all of the recommended reforms suggested by those reviews in 2008... though, in truth, they really didn't.

The problem was that Washington State requires Seattle to negotiate all disciplinary policies with the police officer's union, which is about the same thing as if they were to require each school to negotiate rules and discipline with their students or requiring jails to negotiate terms of discipline with their inmates.

So, 11 of the recommended reforms had to be approved during contract negotiations between the city and the union. After initially suggesting that they would not negotiate any changes to disciplinary policy, the union changed tact and said that they would sell some of the reform items, after modifications, in exchange for more pay. So, the city and union picked and chose which reforms the city could afford to pay off the union to accept.

One of those reforms that was altered and then bought involved a proposed policy that would force the chief to fire any officer who was dishonest during the internal investigation process... The union said that was unacceptable unless the city added that the finding of dishonesty could only be used if the city established an INTENT to mislead with clear and convincing PROOF. The city relented and bought that modified reform, as worded below:

In the case of an officer receiving a sustained complaint involving dishonesty in the course of the officer's official duties or relating to the administration of justice, a presumption of termination shall apply. For purposes of this presumption of termination the Department must prove dishonesty by clear and convincing evidence. Dishonesty is defined as intentionally providing false information, which the officer knows to be false, or intentionally providing incomplete responses to specific questions, regarding facts that are material to the investigation. Specific questions do not include general or 'catch-all' questions. For purposes of this Section dishonesty means more than mere inaccuracy or faulty memory.

Fast forward to the present day and we find that the city bought and paid for a reform item that it can never enforce because, as the union bragged shortly after the contract was agreed upon, there is no real way to prove intent and that, so long as an officer is smart about it, all they have to do is say that any inconsistency found in testimony was a lapse of memory and all would be well.

Only now has the city realized their blunder as the union has overturned two rulings of dishonesty upon appeal which resulted in the rehiring of one officer who was fired on a finding of dishonesty involving a case of alleged brutality.

And now with a third case where the city attorney forced the police chief to change his planned disciplinary actions against another officer who was found to have been dishonest during his investigation into allegations of sexual harassment.

It's interesting that it's only just now that the city and the media are realizing that they didn't get all the reforms that they thought they paid for, even though I immediately noticed this problem shortly after the proposed contract was released in June of 2008, (here and here).

So, will the city keep telling citizens that they enacted all the reforms that were supposed to improve police accountability now? Will the press keep parroting the city's releases without doing research of their own to verify those mistaken claims?

Or will this new development cause people to reexamine the problems with police accountability in Seattle and Washington State as a whole and finally discover that the root of the problem cannot be solved at the local level because the problem is that the state is forcing cities to let their police officers dictate if, how, and why they can and can't be held accountable for their actions?

Keep watching to find out.

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.

About the 2008 Annual Report From the Seattle Police OPA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 02-03-09

Screenshot of fake site created by SPD officers to gather information on police misconduct victims.

LOCAL NEWS

Seattle Police Department's Spy Website Still Active
The fake "Injustice In Seattle" website (click at your own risk), created by some Seattle Police officers in an apparent attempt to trick victims of police misconduct into giving up their personal information, is still operational over a year since it first popped up in response to this site being created.

I was hoping the domain registration they made at the GoDaddy-hosted site would have been allowed to elapse after a year but their host has now given them the domain for free. Sadly, the officers are apparently having some degree of success in gathering information from victims of misconduct for possible retaliation or who knows what reason.

I say it's probably being effective at tricking people into believing it's part of this site because it's recently risen in Google search rankings to just two spots below this site and is actually listed ahead of this site in MSN Search rankings... which means people are being tricked into going there, where they are immediately prompted for their personal contact information, more often.

Not much I can do about it though since it's not like I can call the police to complain about what the police are doing.

The SPOG Guardian Available To Public Again
Also in SPD news, the Seattle Police Officer's Guild has recently made their monthly newsletter, The Guardian, accessible to the public again after they had taken access away while the one of the Guild board members, and editor of The Guardian, was facing charges in relation to a Sturgis bike rally shooting, of which were dropped a few months ago.

The latest, December, edition contains the usual angry rantings against the Office of Professional Accountability (SPD's Internal Affairs department) and insists to members that the latest contract does not affect the existing loopholes in the accountability system that allows officers to get off scott free if they can delay an internal investigation past a 180 day limit and that the new language to fire officers found to have lied in investigations will be impossible for the OPA to actually enforce.

NATIONAL NEWS

Stoughton Police Officer Wins Suit Against Stoughton Police Department
The city of Stoughton lost a $165,000 civil suit that was filed by a Stoughton Police detectives supervisor who was demoted in retaliation for investigating the recently convicted police chief Manuel Cachopa.

Acting police chief Christopher Ciampa demoted Robert Welch in 2005 after he was assigned to assist a special prosecutor with the investigation and when he refused to support a petition to remove council members who were responsible for removing Cachopa as chief of police.

Both Cachopa and the officer he attempted to cover for, David Cohen, were recently convicted on a variety of charges including witness intimidation, attempted extortion, filing false reports, and accessory to attempted extortion over their efforts to discourage someone from filing a misconduct complaint against Cohen.


Michigan Officer Claims She Was Fired For Complaining About Misconduct
A Raisin township police officer in Michigan has filed a lawsuit against her own police department alleging that she was fired for complaining about misconduct within the department in an effort to keep that misconduct, including sexual harassment, under wraps. The department denies the allegations and, predictably, asserts that she was fired for misconduct herself.

In talking with other officers who have won similar suits against their police departments, the former officer's accounting of how she was fired and why strikes a familiar chord with them... as it did with me too.

The Million Dollar High-Five
The city of Hawthorne California has paid out a $1,000,000 settlement in a civil rights suit alleging that Hawthorne police officers brutally beat a man before and after he was handcuffed and then high-fived each other when one officer kicked the handcuffed man in the face so hard that his jaw was broken. All this over a noise complaint.

The suit also alleged that officers denied the man medical care and then arrested his wife only because she witnessed the attack. Criminal charges against the two failed to gain convictions and the couple sued. After their lawyers, Jonas & Driscoll LLP, revealed they had video evidence of the officers congratulating each other for the beating and a picture of one officer kicking the handcuffed victim in the head while he was laying face down on the ground, the city apparently decided to settle. No word on whether the officers were ever disciplined, but I'd bet they weren't.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Indian Police Beat Up Six Year-Old Girl
In a market near Lohamandi in India, two officers have been suspended after two officers assaulted a 6 year old Dalit girl while six other officer looked on silently. Images of the assault have sparked rebukes from human rights organizations and charges may be filed against all officers involved. Charges have also been filed against the girl under allegations that she stole a walled from a woman at the market.

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.

A Tapestry Of Abuses Redux

I haven't posted for a while on purpose as I wanted to leave the previous post up top for a while. It's about how Seattle Police misconduct complaints are being dismissed out of hand and bypassing the OPA process. It seems that when the city refined rules that made it more difficult to excuse sustained findings of misconduct the department responded by skirting the investigative process so officers wouldn't be found guilty of misconduct.

But, let's move on... A while back I wrote a piece about different police abuse stories around the nation that sort of meshed together... some of those stories have some updates so, for those who were actually interested in those stories, I wanted to give some updates.

But first, some local news...

The Sturgis Shooting
The shooting incident involving off-duty Seattle Police Officers and a Hells Angel's MC member in Sturgis is still generating quite a bit of interest so I've been updating our coverage of the investigation and grand jury questioning that has been going on surrounding that event. For the latest summary of noteworthy updates, tune in here.

Ex-Cop Fugitive Arrested Near Seattle
An (now ex) Alabama police officer who's been charged with transporting children across state lines for sexual purposes, rape, possession of child pornography, and other related charges has been arrested in Lakewood, Wa, near Seattle on Monday. The officer appeared in federal court today shackled from head to toe because he had been trained in SWAT tactics and was deemed a dangerous prisoner.

He had fled Alabama once he was released on bond and had been staying at a friend's home nearby for nearly a month when he was finally found. After he fled, federal agents found that his car had been left at an Alabama airport and contained several weapons along with a handwritten note that said "they won't ever find me; six days (in jail) was unbearable for me."

...Guess he was mistaken.

Latest Lawsuit Against the SPD
The federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Michael Watson and his attorney John Kanin was lost last week. While Mr. Watson claimed to have been stunned by a Taser a dozen times and doctors confirmed at least that many burn marks on his torso, the police claimed they didn't shock him that much and that they did so in order to stop him from being combative. Apparently the jury sided with the officers after a week-long trial.

This is the first loss against the city after a long slate of highly publicized settlements and the very pricey loss on a civil rights case appeal by the city on what was originally a quarter of a million dollar lawsuit that bloomed into half a million dollar bill for the city after the legal fees were added. There are several more lawsuits in the works from others though, so we'll try to keep up to date with the latest as we become aware of it.

Now for those updates on the Tapestry stories...

The Death of Andre Thomas
Andre Thomas ended up dead after an encounter with Swissvale Pa. police earlier this month that started with him going door to door asking for help saying he was afraid someone was going to shoot him and ended with, as one witness detailed, police stunning him with a Taser and then punching him in the back of the head until he vomited and then remained motionless for several minutes.

An autopsy performed by Allegheny County coroner was said to be inconclusive with the coroner citing the highly questionable "excited delirium" (a cause of death that is strangely only associated with deaths in police custody) as the cause of death and that there was no evidence of excessive force. With toxicology results taking longer than usual to be released the family asked for an independent autopsy to be performed as well.

The independent autopsy revealed 17 bruises and wounds on Mr. Thomas' face and torso and a preliminary finding of death to be positional asphyxia, though further results are pending due to the county coroner refusing to give the independent coroner blood and other tissue samples. The independent examiner also canvased the neighborhood where the death occurred and said that witnesses say Mr. Thomas did nothing criminal that night, he only seemed to be knocking on doors and pleading for help...

I'm sure we'll hear more about this case in the future since the citizens of that city have been holding protests and rallies to demand a proper investigation into this questionable death in custody.

More from Prince Georges County
While the case of the mistaken raid on a mayor's home in Prince Georges County Maryland has dominated the news, shortly after the case of an accused cop killer being "inexplicably" strangled to death in custody, comes yet another troublesome story of a man who's death has two different stories, one from police and the other from witnesses of Manuel de Jesus Espina's death.

It appears, in this case, an off-duty officer working security had confronted Manuel, supposedly for public intoxication, in an apartment stairwell and depending on which account you believe, the two ended up in a struggle that took them into an apartment where two women claim to have witnessed what happened next... While the officer claims that Manual reached for either his gun or his baton, he's not certain which, and he shot Manuel in front of the two witnesses.

However, the witnesses give a different tale, saying that they heard a commotion outside and saw the officer beating a cowering Manuel. They opened the door and the two fell into the apartment and the officer continued to beat on Manuel until he stood up and then shot Manuel while he laid on the floor.

The embattled police department, already being investigated by the FBI over the jail death and the raid against the mayor, has asked the Latino community for calm while they promise to investigate this latest high profile case of allege police brutality. However, the other two incidents were quickly put down as officers doing their jobs correctly, despite the FBI being called in to investigate these color of law abuses. So residents are rightly skeptical that a fair and unbiased investigation will be conducted by their scandal-ridden police department.

I'm sure we'll be hearing more from Prince Georges County soon, sadly enough.

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.

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.

Miscellaneous News

Just some random news items for you so far today...

Seattle Police Oversight
The Stranger has gotten a hold of the proposed candidate list for the Office of Police Accountability Review Board members. (The OPARB is the public-facing portion of Seattle's civilian oversight system). The list appears pretty unremarkable but we are looking into it.

Remember though, that the police guild does have the right to fight against any proposed OPARB members put forward by city council; so if they aren't happy with any of these proposed members, the list might change before it goes forward. From a preliminary glance though, it appears to have a majority of police-friendly members so we doubt it will change much.

King County Police Oversight
King County Sheriff Sue Rahr has announced the sheriff department's new budget and, due to county-wide budget cuts, she has dropped all recommendations made by an oversight review panel to enact changes to the police misconduct and investigative processes and policies in her department. We're not sure yet how this will affect the proposed addition of a civilian oversight component for the sheriff's department that was negotiated into the latest contract agreement between the county and the King County Police Guild... but it probably doesn't bode well.

Miscellany
I might be on the radio tonight talking about the latest contract agreement between the city of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officer's Guild. As you know from reading the site, I tend to be a bit verbose, but to make matters worse I was a bit nervous during the recorded interview so I really rambled on when I should have been more concise than usual instead. Hopefully I'll sound better than I think I did and the interview will make it on to the show... we'll see.

Even if I'm not on the show, tune into KBCS 91.3 FM tonight at 6:00 for One World Report, it's a really good show that has done a great job covering police misconduct and accountability issues as well as many other interesting and important topics not usually covered in the news.

Update: The interview did make it on to the show, which is available online at their site as well. I guess I did ok, but I really could have done a better job explaining the issues. Improving the way I frame and present these issues is definitely something for me to work on. So, at the least, it was a good learning experience for me.

To get a better idea of what we were discussing, here's the link to the article on how the police contract fails to implement accountability reforms.

More Evidence Of Police Misconduct Cover Ups In Seattle

There's an interesting article in the Seattle Times today about the SCCPAP report on police accountability that was presented to the Seattle City Council today. While we reported on the SCCPAP report along with panel member Eric Schnapper's commentary weeks ago, there was some serious accusations in that article that caught our attention.

Apparently, at the same time the SCCPAP report was released, there was another report from the civilian oversight board (the OPARB) that the city has decided to keep secret as it was highly critical of the police department's internal investigations process and appears to suggest that the 180 day loophole was being abused in order to help officers avoid discipline in cases of alleged misconduct.

Abuse of the 180 day loophole is an issue that we've covered and identified as the most serious reform item that was dropped in the latest contract agreement with the Seattle Police Officer's Guild.

This report that's being withheld from the public also appears to accuse the internal investigations director of obstructing the board's efforts to investigate problems with the police accountability program... both the panel and the review board also site a systematic effort to avoid public transparency as a deep concern, a concern that the city seems unable or unwilling to address due to fierce opposition by the police guild.

However, the council has made moves to replace the entire OPARB panel though, seemingly in an effort to quash investigations into problems with the accountability program that this 3 member board has been vocal about. This is another item we covered that appears to be a move to reduce transparency of the accountability process even further than it already is.

These are all issues we've identified for quite some time, they are the reasons why we strongly recommend against reporting misconduct to the police department's "Office of Professional Accountability" (OPA), and it seems clear that we're not alone in our concerns either... so while it is nice to know that the concerns addressed in this site appear justified and validated, it's deeply troubling that it seems that the city's answer to transparency and accountability problems within their government is to reduce transparency even further and hide misconduct problems from the public.

The problem is that secrecy and democracy are never compatible with each other. Eventually, either one or the other will have to give.

Stay tuned.

New Poll and Stuff

As you can see above, there's a new poll. I'm trying to figure out how to better serve as an advocate for victims of police misconduct and detainee abuse, so I figured I'd ask our readers for help. It's a multiple choice poll, so you can pick more than one answer... though, as you can see, a few police officers visiting from the city's network address chose an option that they'd like to see happen here, which is me arrested for speaking out. (big surprise, huh?)

An interesting aside about one of those items, more legal information, victim support, etc... One of the most visited pages on our site is the misconduct attorney contact page that gives victims and their families a list of civil rights attorneys in the Seattle area that they can contact. Well, we've been hearing rumors that there has been a sharp increase in the number of suits filed against the city alleging police misconduct, so many in fact that the mainstream news outlets have stopped covering it because it's become so common.

Also, we've heard that since there are so few civil rights lawyers that serve the Seattle area that they're backlogged and can't take many more clients. So, if you do use the misconduct attorney contact page, make sure you follow our advice. Contact several of them, not just one. You might get turned down a few times, so keep trying. Since the city can't seem to enact policies that will help prevent misconduct and bring accountability to the department, and since the news media has stopped covering these issues, the only hope to enact change is through the city's pocketbook.

Take care out there.

New SPD Contract Fails To Apply All Accountability Recommendations

I've done some further review of the contract (released Friday) that was negotiated between the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officer's Guild ahead of the June 26th vote by the city council to ratify the agreement and compared the language in that agreement with the PARP police accountability recommendations implementation plan set forth by Seattle mayor Greg Nickels.

The mayor's plan indicated that 11 of the 29 recommendations as required negotiations with the guild in order to achieve full implementation and I used that plan as a comparison to determine what changed between the plan and the contract. Upon careful review it becomes clear that the SCCPAP police accountability recommendations that were released yesterday should be getting more attention than they currently are because the PARP recommendations are not being implemented as proposed.

The following are the 11 recommendations that, according to the mayor, had to be negotiated in order to be implemented along with the recommendation number, text, and relevant section of the agreement where that recommendation is discussed. The recommendations in red have been determined to be specifically invalidated by the agreement, the recommendations in yellow have been limited or altered by the agreement, and the ones without highlighting have been implemented in the contract:

Recommendation 1, which gives the auditor more staff, makes it a full time position, and clearly defines the auditor role, was invalidated in section Appendix E Section 1 Subsection A:

A. The City agrees that the IIS Auditor position shall be continued in effect with its current authority but may be renamed the OPA Auditor, with the clarification that the Auditor may audit all OPA cases involving Guild bargaining unit members.

Recommendation 8, which allows investigators to extend the 180 day limitation on investigations to extend that deadline with just cause, was invalidated in Section 3, Subsection 5, Item F:

Unless further investigation is deemed necessary, the Chief shall make the final decision as to whether charges should be sustained, and if so, what discipline, if any, should be imposed, after considering the information presented in any due process hearing. If new material facts are revealed by the named employee during the due process hearing and such new material facts cause the Chief to act contrary to the OPA Director's recommendation, the case must be sent back to the OPA for further investigation. The "further investigation" described above must be completed within the original 180-day time period. The 180-day period runs from the time a sworn supervisor or OPA received notice of the complaint until the proposed Disciplinary Action Report is issued. If further investigation is warranted the 180-day period begins to run again the day after the
due process hearing, and will not include the time between issuance of the proposed Disciplinary Action Report and the due process hearing. The named employee has no obligation to attend his/her due process hearing or to present any information during the due process hearing if he/she chooses to attend.

However, even more than this, even in the event that the additional testimony given by an officer that convinced the chief to countermand OPA recommendations for discipline were found to be based in intentional falsehood, the department would be unable to impose discipline per PARP Recommendation 20, which presumes officers would be terminated upon findings of dishonesty, if the 180 day deadline expires during the resumed investigation as any additional findings would be tied to the original complaint date, not a new investigative start date that resets the 180 day clock. (the same 180 day deadline that cleared officers in the Alley-Barnes case).

So, not only was Recommendation #8 nullified, Recommendation #20 was severely weakened in this section. Of course, we've already warned of the interdependencies between these recommendations and how removing one could impact several others.

Also, as we uncovered right after a quick read of the contract, the guild now has veto power over matters of Review Board candidacy and has full access to any candidates private records. This should send all OPARB members a very clear and chilling reminder that they should stay quiet and not rock the boat like the last OPARB members did about the cases of misconduct that started off the entire accountability review process.

Yes, that's right, in some ways they made officers even less accountable and disciplinary matters even less transparent with this agreement and any way we look at this it's quite clear that all 29 recommendations will not be enacted as intended. Anyone who insists otherwise is not being honest about the police accountability situation in Seattle.

Unsurprisingly, the media hasn't picked up on the contract being issued and they haven't compared it to the recommendations yet, and it's likely that they never will. Instead, they'll reissue press releases from the city that say they were all put into place just fine and that you'll never hear about another case of misconduct going unanswered... at least... not until next time.

Stay safe out there, because Seattle police officers are still just as unaccountable for their actions as they ever were and we're about to have even less oversight than before.

The SPD Contract vs The PARP Recommendations

Busy day today... In addition to releasing the SCCPAP report on police accountability, the agreement between the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officer's Guild has also been made public and I did a quick review to determine which of the 29 PARP recommendations had been altered or removed from consideration... and it's clear that all 29 recommendations are not going to be enacted as intended.

The exclusion of those recommendations means that the SCCPAP recommendations, released earlier today, should merit some closer and more serious examination in order to cover the gaps left by the remove and alterations of the PARP recommendations. But, as we've mentioned, it's not clear if that will happen. In any case, here are some of my preliminary findings:

The contract reveals that the 180 exclusionary recommendation was removed from consideration, as alluded to previously by the police guild.

Furthermore, while the recommendation that the chief is to notify the city of any decisions that counter investigative recommendations regarding sustained findings of misconduct, the contract severely limited what the chief may tell the city.

Finally, while not part of the PARP recommendations, the contract provides a clause that allows the guild to overrule appointments to the civilian review board and allows the guild to review the private records of any candidate for the civilian review board... essentially, this clause also allows the guild to control who gets put on the OPARB, which may indicate why the current membership of the OPARB was completely wiped out and replaced by councilmember Tim Burgess.

As we've presumed, it's clear that all 29 recommendation were not implemented as recommended, contradictory to statements from the mayor's office and some council members.

The full contract is available here, but the following are the pertinent sections outlined above:

3.1
The parties agree that discipline is a command function, and that the Department may institute a disciplinary procedure. So much of said procedure that relates to the right of an employee to a hearing and the mechanics thereof are outlined in this Article; provided, however, that it is understood that if deemed appropriate by the Chief of the Department, discipline or discharge may be implemented immediately consistent with the employee's constitutional rights. Disciplinary action shall be for just cause.

In the case of an officer receiving a sustained complaint involving dishonesty in the course of the officer's official duties or relating to the administration of justice, a presumption of termination shall apply. For purposes of this presumption of termination the Department must prove dishonesty by clear and convincing evidence. Dishonesty is defined as intentionally providing false information, which the officer knows to be false, or intentionally providing incomplete responses to specific questions, regarding facts that are material to the investigation. Specific questions do not include general or 'catch-all' questions. For purposes of this Section dishonesty means more than mere inaccuracy or faulty memory.

3.4 F.
Unless further investigation is deemed necessary, the Chief shall make the final decision as to whether charges should be sustained, and if so, what discipline, if any, should be imposed, after considering the information presented in any due process hearing. If new material facts are revealed by the named employee during the due process hearing and such new material facts cause the Chief to act contrary to the OPA Director's recommendation, the case must be sent back to the OPA for further investigation. The "further investigation" described above must be completed within the original 180-day time period. The 180-day period runs from the time a worn supervisor or OPA received notice of the complaint until the proposed Disciplinary Action Report is issued. If further investigation is warranted the 180-day period begins to run again the day after the due process hearing, and will not include the time between issuance of the proposed Disciplinary Action Report and the due process
hearing. The named employee has no obligation to attend his/her due process hearing or to present any information during the due process hearing if he/she chooses to attend.

3.4 G
When the Police Chief changes a recommended finding from the OPA, the Chief will be required to state his reasons in writing and provide these to the OPA Director. A summary of the Chief's decisions should be provided to the Mayor and City Council upon request. In stating his reasons in writing for changing an OPA recommendation from a sustained finding, the Chief shall use a format that discloses the material reasons for his decision. The explanation shall make no reference to the officer's name or any personally identifying information in providing his explanation. In
the event the change of recommendation is the result of personal, family, or medical information the Chief's explanation shall reference "personal information" as the basis of his decision.

App E
3.G.
Because members of the OPA Review Board may serve in a quasi- judicial capacity in making decisions about whether or not investigations of police misconduct are complete, as a requirement for appointment, candidates must be able to comply with the requirements of the appearance of fairness doctrine with respect to their duties as a member of the OPA Review Board. For the purposes of this Appendix, the appearance of fairness doctrine shall be applied as an eligibility criteria for appointment to the OPA Review Board, as opposed to being applied on a case-by-case basis.

In an effort to limit disputes regarding the type of information which must be provided to the Guild regarding a candidate, the parties hereby set forth the information to which the Guild is entitled. Criminal history record information which includes records of arrest, charges, allegations of criminal conduct and nonconviction data relating to a candidate for appointment, and Department records of any complaints of police misconduct filed by the candidate shall be made available to the Guild. Access to such records by the Guild shall be for the sole purpose of assessing whether or not the candidate meets the above eligibility criteria. Access shall be limited to the executive officers and members of the Board of Directors of the Guild and the Guild's attorneys. Such records shall

not be used by anyone in connection with any other civil, criminal or other matter, or for any other purpose. After the Guild has conducted its assessment of the candidate, the records shall be promptly returned to the Department unless the Guild challenges the appointment as set forth in Section V, below. If the Guild challenges the appointment, the records shall be used solely for the purpose of the arbitration, will be presented to the arbitrator under seal, and will be returned to the City at the conclusion of the arbitration. Except as otherwise necessary for the purposes of this Appendix or the resolution of a dispute under Section V below, such records shall be maintained by the Guild as confidential and shall not be copied, disclosed or disseminated.