Hiatus

Sorry for the dearth postings lately, again... Been struggling with work and some nasty headaches lately, but should be back at it shortly.

Planning some stories on the city's surveillance camera policies that let cops spy on citizens but consistently hides evidence of police misconduct. Remember, after all, that the city of Seattle is the worst government in the state of Washington for responding to FOIA requests and this holds especially true for getting accountability and misconduct information from the police department.

Also planning some comments on Seattle's plans to build a new jail and how it might mean more liability for the city. After all, how can the city negotiate a contract that would prevent jail guards from abusing detainees and violating constitutional rights when they can't even negotiate a contract that allows them to control their own police force? ...of course, that's assuming that the city doesn't foolishly put it's own uncontrollable and violent police force in charge of the jail too.

Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!

Technical Difficulties

Sorry if you couldn't get in this morning, seems that there was a problem with the switchover to the new injusticeinseattle.org domain. The host provider wasn't fast enough fixing it so I just switched back and set the new domain to do a redirect to the old domain at injusticeinseattle.blogspot.com.

Hopefully everything is ok for the time being.

Our Comments Policy

It appears as though some officers are upset that we don't publish their comments when they send us harassing or intimidating messages. So, to help them out, I'm going to post our comments policy here, even though it's right there on the comments form itself.

Our policy in regards to publishing comments is as follows:

COMMENT POLICY
Please make note that comments containing harassing, threatening, intimidating, or illegal content will be rejected and may be reported as abuse to your service provider.

Also, be aware that since this site does receive threats and intimidating messages from law enforcement officers and agencies, it is strongly advised that you do not add any identifiable information in your comments in order to avoid being harassed or threatened by law enforcement officers yourself.

Alas, it appears as though police officers think this shouldn't apply to them.

Well, guys, your police department and the city may think it's great that you act like thugs in public and intimidate the people who you've already abused in other forums and websites... but this site is an advocacy site for victims of police misconduct and your unprofessional attempts to bully people and add insult to the injuries you've already caused them will not be tolerated here.

Nor will I tolerate your persistent attempts to intimidate me into shutting down the site. If you don't like it, you are quite free to stop visiting here so often and go post your thuggish comments elsewhere.

Analyzing The Guild's PARP Accountability Alterations

In order to help people understand how removal of the 180 day rule exclusion affects the remaining PARP recommendations I've decided to break it down a little bit better.

Here are all 29 of the mayor's PARP accountability recommendations, color-coded to link the interrelated items:

While not all interrelated items are interdependent, the following items are interdependent:

These items are specifically designed to deal with the loophole that allowed the chief of police to exonerate officers against the recommendations of OPA investigations that had recommended discipline, as in the Alley-Barnes case where officers were exonerated by the chief without explanation and one was promoted after severely beating a man in front of several witnesses without just cause.

Item 6 requires the OPA Director to sit in on Loudermill hearings between the chief, accused officer, and the officer's union defense in order to identify any new information revealed by the officer that was not revealed during the investigation.

Item 7 states that if an officer does reveal new information in the Loudermill hearing, that he must refer the case back to the OPA for further investigation in order to verify the new information and determine if it changes the outcome instead of just deviating from the recommendation on his own judgment.

Item 8 would give the OPA time to investigate any new claims made by an officer during a Loudermill hearing, without it, any new claims made by an officer cannot be investigated because the additional time required would force an exoneration because of the 180 day rule that states if an investigation goes over 180 days that it results in an exoneration.

Item 20 would force the SPD to terminate the employment of any officer who falsified testimony to the chief during a Loudermill hearing in an attempt to extend the process or force the chief to go against an OPA recommendation.

Item 25 would require the chief to provide written explaination whenever he deviated from an OPA recommendation for discipline.

Now... Here's the problem. The police guild has already stated that it has removed item 8 from the list, this means that if new facts are revealed during a Loundermill then the new facts cannot be investigated without risking an exoneration be default via the 180 day limit to an investigation. This also means that the OPA cannot investigate whether new claims made by officers in Loudermill hearings are legitimate and if they did they couldn't discipline them because the 180 day rule would expire, thus the nullification of this recommendation nullifies recommendation number 20.

Also, the guild has hinted that it has weakened item 20 in a Seattle Times interview to put a higher burden of proof on the OPA to prove that any new details revealed by an officer that extended an investigation would have to be shown without doubt to be an intentional and egregious falsehood.

Furthermore, the guild has hinted that it may have weakened item 25 in a Seattle Times interview, if this is the case then it would make the chief more inclined to exonerate against OPA recommendations since deferring an investigation back to the OPA when new details are raised at the end of an investigation would result in the same outcome.

So, the guild has removed one item and weakened two others out of a list of 5 interdependent items that were specifically designed to prevent officers from avoiding punishment by revealing "new information" to the chief at the end of an investigation that they hadn't disclosed during investigations... and by doing so, they can force an exoneration by forcing the investigation to go beyond the 180 day limit.

Now, the guild has said that the OPA can ask the guild to extend the deadline on a per-case basis, but consider this... one of the guild's functions is to act as a defense council to officers accused of misconduct, and in that capacity they act as a defense attorney during these investigations. If a prosecutor were to ask a criminal defense attorney if they could extend an investigation where otherwise the stoppage of an investigation would result in an acquittal, would that attorney allow the prosecutor to continue it?

No... and neither would the guild willingly extend the deadline to allow the OPA to discipline one if it's members. Without item 8, items 6, 7 and 20 are all rendered incapacitated. And since the guild may have weakened item 25, the whole set of 5 are rendered inoperable.

So, the guild has just killed off 5 of the 29 recommendations. We are waiting to see which of the 24 remaining recommendations have been altered as well, but by far, these 5 were the most important of the bunch as they were designed to address the very cases that started this whole mess.

A Video To End This Miserable Week

Feels like the battle for police accountability and civil rights in Seattle was lost this week, today I just feel like the fight has been completely beaten out of me.

I would post "I Fought The Law", but we all already know the police guild always wins here in Seattle... so instead, I submit this for your enjoyment. The Clash - Know Your Rights

Have a good weekend, and stay safe out there people.

Police Guild Might Have Won Battle Against Accountability

Jonah Spangenthal-Lee reports at The Stranger Blog SLOG that Seattle Police Officer's Guild president Rich O'Neil has told him that they have successfully negotiated at least one of the mayor's 29 PARP recommendations off the table for their contract... namely, the 180 day limit to investigations of officer misconduct, which is the same loophole that caused the PARP to be formed when that limitation allowed the officers who brutally assaulted Alley-Barnes to get off without discipline, and even garnered one of them a promotion instead.

The outcry over the use of that loophole spurred the PARP into being and the 180 day limit was part of one vital set of recommendation that would have forced the police chief to defer any investigation back to the OPA if an officer revealed new information to the chief during a Loudermill hearing (which occurs after an investigation is complete) that wasn't revealed to the OPA during the investigation. Without the ability to extend the 180 day limitation, all an officer needs to do is withhold information from the OPA and then reveal it at the Loudermill after the investigation, (and the 180 day limitation) has run it's course... (which is presumably what the officers involved in the Alley-Barnes beating did to avoid punishment and get an Administrative Exoneration from the chief instead).

While O'Neil feels this is a minor tweak, we've said from the beginning that many of these recommendations were designed to be interrelated and when any are modified, it can render the whole point of the accountability changes moot... and in this case it seems that this is what has happened. While the mayor and council insist all 29 recommendations have been achieved in negotiations, this revelation by O'Neil contradicts that assurance from the city government and seems to paint everyone who is touting the agreement as a win for accountability as a bald-faced liar.

Of course, we're waiting to see what has happened to all the recommendations before we can see exactly how much damage has been done, because it sounds as though the SPOG was able to change some other recommendations as well, especially the one that requires the chief to explain why he exonerates officers in writing when he goes against OPA recommendations for discipline.

As it stands now, it's really starting to look as though the city just handed the Seattle Police Officer's Guild a record breaking pay raise without asking for anything meaningful in return and sticking the citizens of Seattle with nothing more than more of the same unaccountable policing and some wallet-busting tax increases in the future for our trouble.

Stay tuned.

Paying A Painful Price For Wrongful Convictions

While reading details about yet another exoneration of an innocent person who was wrongfully convicted at The Agitator, I had a bit of a flashback. I was back at my fourth week in jail, where I was sent based on false charges and testimony, and I was laying in my bunk watching a movie on the television in a cell that held about 18 people. The cells we were held in were common rooms, just a series of bunks in a large area and no separate rooms or anything, so there was no privacy of any sort and only one television, so I tended to watch whatever was put on when I did bother to watch it. At the time things were looking pretty bleak, I was still stuck with a public defender who refused to listen when I insisted on my innocence and persisted in telling everyone I should plead guilty or face 18 years of prison for a crime I didn’t commit.

The movie on at this time was “The Hurricane” and if you haven’t ever seen the film it’s the story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a boxer who was wrongfully imprisoned for murder but eventually exonerated after 22 long years of struggle to prove his innocence. It’s a very powerful film and I highly suggest it, (as well as his book, "The 16th Round")… but at the time it was painful for me to watch because all I could do is wonder if this was going to be me, sitting in prison away from my family for something I never did. It was so painful, in fact, that I cried… something that isn’t really a good idea to do in front of a bunch of people sitting in a jail cell with you, some of which had just finished ruthlessly beating another prisoner and weren’t happy with me when I unsuccessfully tried to stop it and get a guard’s attention.

In the end, I was lucky, I wasn’t convicted… but how close I came to being convicted is something that will leave me changed forever because I never really realized just how easy it was to be wrongfully imprisoned… and if you knew what I knew, you would be frightened by how easy it really is. If it weren’t for the video tape that proved I didn’t do anything wrong, the police detective in charge of the case said, he had no doubt that I would be sent to prison for a very long time and the prosecutor agreed. I later learned that the venue where the tape was taken had tried to destroy it out of fear of a lawsuit over how they encouraged patrons to attack me that night, if they would have succeeded I wouldn’t be here typing today. I was lucky that it existed, that it wasn’t destroyed, and that the detective and prosecutor were ethical enough to reveal it’s existence and acknowledge my innocence… usually, it doesn’t work that way.

According to The Innocence Project, eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing. While eyewitness testimony can be persuasive evidence before a judge or jury, 30 years of strong social science research has proven that eyewitness identification is often unreliable. Research shows that the human mind is not like a tape recorder; we neither record events exactly as we see them, nor recall them like a tape that has been rewound. Instead, witness memory is like any other evidence at a crime scene; it must be preserved carefully and retrieved methodically, or it can be contaminated.

While the story that led me to remember that painful time in my life when just about all hope had left me and while it does give me hope for the many who languish behind bars who don’t belong there because of DNA testing… in most cases of eyewitness-based convictions, there is no DNA evidence available to clear anyone… just as there wouldn’t have been in my case as well. For them, it seems, there is little hope… and the cost in human terms is difficult to describe to someone who hasn’t lived it, and it is a cost too high for a society to morally sustain because the pain and suffering inflicted by wrongful accusations and convictions is beyond description, and a crime against the victims of such miscarriages of justice. If two months of being punished for something I never did is more painful than I can describe, I could hardly imagine nor describe what years of that kind of torture would do to a person.

The Innocence Project does give us some hope as it is working towards convincing state governments to implement reforms that would reduce the number of wrongful convictions based on faulty eyewitness testimony. Unfortunately, few states are listening, including Washington state. Washington has a dismal record for implementing reforms to prevent and address wrongful convictions and exonerations. Hopefully, we can educate enough people about the perils of wrongful convictions and convince them that this is a problem that can affect them… much more easily than they know… much more easily than I ever knew too.