A Request To Support Community Based Media

With the recent demise of a major Seattle news outlet and reports of similar incidents in cities across the US, it's disconcerting that our sources for information about what happens around us are being consolidated and reduced to television-friendly soundbites that are filtered as to not offend advertisers or the editorial bias empowered by limited competition in local markets.

Still, there is some hope in the form of community-based media... but, when other news outlets are dying off from a lack of revenue, can non-profit news outlets like community-based radio keep itself afloat in this difficult economic climate?

My own favorite local community-based radio station, KBCS 91.3, recently held their spring fund drive and fell $50,000 short of their modest goal of getting $177,000 in donations that they need to stay on the air and keep providing invaluable programming that includes the production of in-depth news reporting and investigative reports that discuss important stories that just aren't covered in the mainstream media or even in our local alternative print press.

Now, with the number of sources for news and information decreasing, it's more important than ever to keep these independent and invaluable sources of news reporting alive. Sure, blogs and other sites like this one are here to report on things that most other outlets only report on sporadically, if at all, as a specialized and focused repository of information. And yes, from time to time we do produce exclusive stories that wouldn't be found in any other local media outlet.

But, in large part, bloggers and independent journalists just don't have access to the same resources, the same audience base, and the same sources of inside information that media outlets, including community-based media, has access to. We depend on them just as much as you do as sources of information on which to base many of our stories that we bring to you.

We need them to stick around, you need them to stick around. I can't replace what they do, just as I can not hope to cover the stories that the Seattle Post Intelligencer was able to cover thanks to their immense resources and access to public records that I just cannot afford to buy.

Now, I've often toyed with the idea of asking for donations to help build this site, produce better stories, and gain access to public records that I couldn't afford otherwise... but instead I'm going to ask that our readers consider donating to KBCS in order to keep them around and help them produce the kind of stories that we depend on.

Please visit their membership page and donate what you can to keep them on the air and keep them producing the great content that they've been giving to us with programs like One World Report that is produced locally and focuses on the issues that are important to our community like Seattle Police accountability and local civil rights issues.

If you won't do it for me, at least do it for yourself. We need all the voices that we can get who are willing to speak about important news stories. One major one has already been silenced, let's not risk losing another.

Is Seattle Now A One Newspaper Town?

The Seattle Post Intelligencer's site redirected to this page for a few hours this evening.

Speculation as to when, not if, one of Seattle's two major newspapers would stop printing has abounded ever since the paper's owner, Hearst, announced that they would be shutting the paper down if no buyer was found by mid-March.

Tonight the newspaper's site, seattlepi.nwsource.com, which is hosted from the same domain as the other Seattle newspaper, The Seattle Times, redirected to a failover site with limited availability for a brief time as part of a split that put the Seattle PI in it's own www.seattlepi.com domain, which subsequently broke just about every link that anyone ever put up to an article that was published on the Seattle Post Intelligencer's site.

(I'm currently looking into fixing the links on this site, if possible, so bear with me if a link to any given story isn't working for a while. I just hope that these stories don't end up gone for good if the whole paper and site go down completely.)

Hopefully, instead of shutting down completely the Seattle PI will be going to an online-only format at least, even though that would mean that they likely won't have some of the really hard-hitting investigative pieces that Seattle desperately needs to read about... like police misconduct stories for example. (and yes, police officers have been gloating and cheering about the shutdown at the newspaper's site since the announcement was made) But it would be better than nothing as rumors are that the The Seattle Times may not survive through this year either, leaving Seattle a newspaperless town.

The sudden splitting of the domain tonight may be a sign that the paper's demise is imminent though... and if so the temporary domain left up during the switch was an unintentionally prescient "http://disaster.seattlepi.nwsource.com".

Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske May Be New Drug Czar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Seattle PI - Bringing Us The Good News And The Bad

It's been reported today that the Seattle Post Intelligencer won the 2009 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award in the series category from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York for their "Strong Arm Of The Law" series of reports that ran in January and February of 2008.

That outstanding series, written by investigative reporters Eric Nalder, Lewis Kamb, and Daniel Lathrop, reported on the Seattle Police Department's use stand-alone obstruction of justice charges to cover for excessive force cases and the inability of the Seattle Police Department to discipline officers for misconduct and brutality.

The Seattle PI has a long history of hard-hitting investigative journalism that critically examined both the Seattle Police Department and the King County Sheriff's Department as exemplified by their Strong Arm of the Law series and their 2005 "Conduct Unbecoming" series that examined extensive corruption in the King County Sheriff's Department that included cases of alleged child molestation, rampant and unchecked misconduct, as well as stories of witnesses being arrested for reporting misconduct.

Both of these series of investigative reports led to reforms being recommended due to public outcry and pressure on public officials who would have never done anything otherwise. Sadly, though, while some of the recommended reforms were implemented in the Seattle Police Department, the King County Sheriff's Department ultimately failed to implement most of their reforms due to budget problems. Albeit, if it weren't for the Seattle PI, a public discussion about these abuses that led to some changes would never have taken place, and Seattle would be even worse than it currently is for that.

Sadly, though, this well-deserved award comes right after the news was released that the Seattle PI will likely be shut down soon as the paper's owner, Hearst Corp., has put the paper up for sale with the provision that if nobody buys it in 60 days the paper will be shut down and the entire staff will be laid off. There have been rumors that it may become an online-only news agency, but even that is a long shot and would likely not include the kinds of resources that such in-depth investigative reports would require.

The loss of the PI would be devastating to the efforts to improve police accountability and transparency in Seattle, Washington as the PI is the only mainstream news agency that was willing to take on the powerful Seattle Police Officer's Guild as well as the other police unions and politicians who would rather have kept these reports out of the public's view.

Seattle's other main paper, The Seattle Times, is more conservative leaning and tends to give biased reports that mainly repeat official press releases when allegations of abuse break in the news and otherwise doesn't report on police misconduct itself.

Seattle's alternative press doesn't give us much hope either as The Seattle Weekly, while breaking the story of abuses in the King County Jail that led to the well-publicized investigation by the DOJ, generally ignores police abuses. The Stranger, Seattle's other alternative weekly paper who used to have a fairly good record of reporting on police brutality cases, has recently grown rather friendly with the department and has turned to giving police beat reports instead of any investigative looks into police misconduct.

Seattle's television news stations also don't give us much hope. While two of the stations, King 5 and KOMO 4, have done some reporting on specific instances of police brutality when those cases came with video proof, otherwise they have missed several cases that have been covered in the Seattle PI.

This loss would also affect advocates and citizen reporters alike as we don't have the kind of resources and inside sources that a major news organization like the PI has. We too rely on organizations like the PI to inform us, as well as the general public, when cases of misconduct we would not have heard about occur and when these cases actually form a pattern of abuses that indicate a deeper case of corruption instead of isolated cases of abuse.

The loss of the Seattle Post Intelligencer will be a devastating blow to those of us who try to bring official corruption and misconduct to light and improve our city by encouraging political leaders to implement reforms that bring much needed accountability and transparency to our police agencies.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer was an invaluable ally in the fight for a better police department in Seattle and King county and their absence will leave an impact on all our lives, not just because of the loss of such excellence in journalism, but also because the absence of an organization to keep the city honest about abuses will bring about a return to unaccountability to our police agencies and, in turn, will result in more cases of brutality and misconduct that we will all have to pay a price for.

The loss of the Seattle Post Intelligencer will be felt by Seattle long after that last paper is printed.

From The E-Mailbag

I received this message last night from an anonymous reader in regards to the Sturgis shooting story that we've been following lately and I thought it would be interesting to share it with my readers to see what they thought about it...

"Sir, you should check your facts before printing things on your blog if you want legitimacy..
1) The victim in the Sturgis brutal beat down is NOT a LT
2) Get a copy of the discipline report for the victim of the beat down via public disclosure to learn he was never discplined for threating to shoot a bar manager.
3) Call Hector Castro and ask him why he is being sued for SLANDER for reporting the same erroneous info
4) Irregardless is not a word.
5) Make the correction before the LT sues you..."

(For those who don't know, Hector Castro is the reporter who wrote the article in The Seattle Post Intelligencer which alleged Ron Smith, the officer who is suspected of shooting a Hells Angels MC member in a Sturgis bar last week, had a history of sustained misconduct complaints that included taunting fans while working at a football game and of threatening to shoot a bar manager who tried to throw him out of a Tacoma Washington bar.

I've forwarded this on to Mr. Castro to determine if it's a hoax, but I don't expect a reply. The paper and other news outlets that repeated the same allegations have not issued any retractions or corrections though.)

So, readers... what do you think you would do about this one?

Seattle Media Intimidated Into Silence?

An interesting aspect of the Sturgis shooting story seems to have made a lot of people wonder why all the media and blogs in Seattle kept silent about the name of the Seattle police officer who shot a Hells Angel Motorcycle Club member in a South Dakota bar while off-duty this weekend. It seems a good question since the Meade County authorities have already released his name due to the Grand Jury testimony being taken over the case and so has the media outlets in South Dakota and elsewhere.

So why, when the officer's name is readily available, won't anyone in Seattle dare utter the officer's name?

That's what I tried to find out. I have questioned several media contacts in Seattle asking if they've heard of any pressure coming from the Seattle Police Officer's Guild or the Seattle Police Department over keeping the officer's name out of print even after his name was widely released in the South Dakota press. It seemed odd to keep his name out of the Seattle media due to security concerns when his name has been revealed elsewhere after all... and people were calling them and us on it.


Of course, as you can see above, some of our readers took us to task when we didn't release his name when we knew it as well. Well, first, when we realized who it was it hadn't been released yet, but we kept a lid on it originally because we don't want to see any officers or their families hurt due to the valid concerns for the officer's safety. But, after the officer's name became public knowledge we wondered why the press in Seattle still kept it quiet... after all, his name was reported in at least 4 different articles and television stations, albeit in states other than Washington. While the original reason hopefully was for the officer's family's safety, that reason didn't seem plausible anymore, unfortunately.

Since officer safety didn't seem a valid reason anymore and since the press, with it's own legal departments and on-staff lawyers, won't print the name, we sure as heck wanted to be cautious about it as well. After all, the Seattle Police Officer's Guild is no stranger to using lawyers to intimidate people into being quiet about misconduct. For example:

• Seattle Police Guild Threatens to Sue Anti-Police Misconduct Group -1991
• Seattle Police Guild Hires Detectives To Investigate Filers Of Misconduct Claims -1999
• Seattle Police File Charges Against Complainant For Harassment -2001
• King County Police Guild's Rise To Power Through Litigation And Politics -2005
• King County Sheriff Filed Complaint Against Seattle PI For Reporting on "Conduct Unbecoming" -2006
  

It's clear, given their past history, that the police officers make good on their threats to investigate or sue reporters and their employers for publishing their stories. So we had reason to worry and we wondered if others had the same reasons in mind when keeping it quiet.

Adding to our own reasons for being cautious was an incident where this site also had to deal with threats of legal action when, ironically, the same person involved in the Sturgis shooting himself threatened legal action when we published a picture from the Seattle Police Officer's Guild's monthly newsletter "The Guardian" which was critical of civil rights that was also published in the Blogging Georgetown blog (who also told us that they were similarly threatened as well).

With pressure like that, it's little wonder why the free press in Seattle might not be as free as you think. However, this case of self-censorship on the part of the press may not be the direct result of any undue pressure.

One reporter responded to our questions by speculating that it might be a case of reporters holding to a long standing tradition in Seattle of not naming people who might be the potential subject of a criminal investigation when they have not yet been charged or detained. This seems like a valid policy that should be applied to officers and citizens alike and may well be the case as the officer in question has not been charged over the shooting nor for bringing a firearm into a bar while off-duty in a different state. However, this reason didn't stop reporters in South Dakota from revealing his name. So, perhaps there are different journalistic standards in play, but we'll never know for certain.

No matter what the reason, for now, the officer's identity remains a secret... though only to the people of Seattle. Given past pressures police have put on the press in Seattle, it's no wonder that people are asking why the media is keeping information from the public, even if the reason is ultimately innocuous.

UPDATED 08/13/08 16:18 - One area reporter's response noted.
UPDATED 08/15/08 10:13 - The Seattle Times finally released Lt. Ron Smith's name 

How Many Lawsuits, Seattle?

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

Three?

Really?

Try again...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sad State Of Affairs In Seattle

Let’s take a quick look at all that’s going on in Seattle right now, because there’s quite a bit happening here right now, and it’s pretty damn disgraceful.

First, King County officials are still arguing with the US Department of Justice over the US DOJ’s stinging rebuke over the deplorable conditions in Seattle’s King County Jail and the mistreatment of detainees that the DOJ termed so egregious that they were a violation of their constitutional rights. Meanwhile the Seattle press raised more of a stink about conditions in the animal shelters than they did about people dying slow tortured deaths in their jails.

If that weren’t shameful enough, in the face of proposed massive budget cutbacks at the jail, your inability to protect detainees and treat deadly infections at that gulag has gotten you in the crosshairs of a huge class action lawsuit that will further drain your coffers. Gee, maybe it makes sense to care about human rights, huh? It’s downright disgusting, especially when the King County executive still has the testicular fortitude to pretend that he’s some defender of civil rights after declaring that pretrial detainees in HIS jail have no rights to defend.

Ah, next we see that Seattle government is still run by the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild when the government negotiated a record breaking raise for Seattle Police officers and demanded nothing in return… seems that even then it still couldn’t stand up to the guild enough to enact the recommendations that their own panels on police accountability recommended that they implement. The president of the guild has been heard to be laughing all the way to the bank at the payoff he got while still preventing the implementation of reforms that would have closed off the loopholes that spurred the public outcry that caused those two panels to form in the first place.

So, Seattle, not only have you drained the pockets of your taxpayers to pay off the police guild for nothing in return, you’re now facing an onslaught of civil rights lawsuits because of your failures to keep your police officers from violating everyone’s civil rights. We hear there’s a tidal wave of lawsuits in the works and you’ve already been pummeled in the press repeatedly for the suits you already settled or outright LOST.

Gee, maybe you should have figured out that it would be cheaper to ensure that everyone’s civil rights were protected and that your police officers were held accountable for their actions… instead you’ve wasted your credibility and tax income on trying to cover up for their misdeeds while giving them a big fat raise for acting badly.

Oh, but guess what, it's still not the best part... hidden in that little contract is a clause that allows the police department to veto any civilian oversight panel members it wants, that way it can keep those pesky civilian reviewers quiet so they don't raise alarms to spark more reviews like they did last year. So, next time you won't get a warning when a rash of unpunished police misconduct sparks a wave of costly lawsuits that drain your pocketbooks dry. Not only did the city make sure the same loopholes stay in place to cover up misconduct, they made some new ones too.

Well, guess what, those budget woes in King County are going to add to your grief. Not only have you wasted money rewarding cops for costing you more money in lawsuits, the county has to offload it’s cases to the city because it can’t afford to keep prosecuting and holding your detainees on trumped up charges of obstruction. So now you have to waste more money building your own jail and hiring more lawyers.

Oh, but that’s not all folks. Seems the city attorney has been getting pummeled in the press for a bunch of disgracefully failed politically motivated raids on local nightclubs while the police have been harassing club owners in an effort to make way for more condos. Seems you have some motivation for keeping your cops from being held accountable, because then you can use them for political gain without any questions asked... like how you've been risking massive lawsuits by raiding homeless encampments.

Does it end there? Nope… That flawed contract was released less than a week before the city council is about to ratify it and the press hasn’t even bothered to call the city on lying to their faces when the city assured everyone that the contract would enact all 29 recommendations made by their “Police Accountability Review Panel”.

Oh, not only that, but on the same day the city made it’s other panel’s recommendations public… How many news articles on that were there? None… the city paid for the Seattle City Council Police Accountability Panel to turn out 23 recommendations to improve police accountability and oversight… just to completely ignore them and pretend like it didn’t happen!!! And the press doesn’t even bother to notice such an utterly willful waste, such a blatant spit in the face of the public outcry over police abuses and even Seattle's weekly independent papers that were critical of reform efforts at first are giving the city a free pass for lying to their faces.

Seattle, I got to say, you’ve been screwed... and you won't even know it until that tidal wave of civil rights lawsuits slams into your wallets and keeps on flooding your city. You'll wonder why you weren't warned about this encroaching mess, but by then those politicians that lied to you will have moved on and will be laughing at the mess they intentionally ignored and left behind.

Take care out there, because it's all about to get much worse.

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.

In The News Today...

It is essential that justice be done, and it is equally vital that justice not be confused with revenge, for the two are wholly different. –Oscar Aria

A couple stories today got me thinking about a few things...

Seattle Police Officer Hospitalized After Assaulted By Teens
Ok, for those who don't read this site enough to know, we're not "anti-police" and we don't condone violence against police officers. (hence why I'm disliked by both sides of the police/anti-police positions, thus is the fate of the moderates). The officer involved in this situation had witnessed a fight between two groups of teens and as he was arresting one assailant the others started to punch and kick him while he was prone. Another, reportedly, attempted to get his weapon while the beating took place.

Certainly a frightening situation, I know how it feels to be beaten by several people and not being able to do anything about it, so I have a good degree of empathy for this officer. I'm glad he had backup that came quickly and arrested the attackers, I'm also glad he's getting treatment in a hospital...

Now, sure, this was far more than was done to help me last year when I was attacked by that gang of neonazis (not figuratively, they had swazi tattoos and all) and the police refused to let me get treatment and they didn't try to stop the beating or even bother figuring out who attacked me, but that wouldn't justify any of them being harmed in kind like this... so I hope this officer gets well soon and isn't too traumatized by the event.

...but, at the same time, we certainly hope the police officers who responded didn't decided to allow themselves a shot at some "frontier justice" by way of any unnecessary force. We also hope the department doesn't use this as an excuse to ratchet up the aggressiveness and brutality of their officers, which often happens. Two wrongs really don't make anything right after all, which is the whole point of my not wishing harm on any of them. (see how that works?)

That, I suppose, leads to this...

Suspect in killing freed after 1 1/2 years in jail
Victim's mom: 'System has failed me'

So, prosecutors took 18 months to decide to drop charges against a man they admitted that they could not prove had committed any crime, stating that witnesses are now more confused over who did what and when then they were in the first place concerning the stabbing death of 23 year old Jessie Drungo during a scuffle that may have had racial overtones.

Now, the young man who died was said to be an inspiration, an ex-gang member who straightened himself out and spoke out against gang violence, and I have no doubt of that whatsoever. I certainly feel badly for the mother who now has little hope for justice... she said of the decision "I'm totally disturbed that someone could kill my son and walk away from it... The system has failed me."

Yes, it did fail you... it fails a lot of us, and I'm terribly sorry that the person who killed your son is walking free. But, from the sounds of the story, there's a good chance that the person they set free wasn't the one who killed her son, and we are talking about blind justice, not blind vengeance... the two must be kept separate, different, not intertwined to the point that we just punish anyone for something they might not have done just to say that someone paid a price for some wrong done.

Again, though, another empathy moment for me though, because of all the things that bother me about what happened to me last year, one of my biggest problems is that the person who committed a crime for which I was wrongfully punished is still out there, still free, and the police have said they will not go after him. I don't want him in jail to punish him, I want him in jail to make sure he doesn't stab other people and so other people don't learn that it's excusable to commit a crime and then let someone else get tortured for it.

So... we all mourn another lost chance at justice for yet another person. but it does happen quite often, and that loss does not justify risking the destruction of a potentially innocent life in the process... after all, how does destroying a second life really bring any justice or restitution for the loss of the first life?

But, that leads me to wonder about something else... This poor woman lost her son, tragically and senselessly, and I'm deeply saddened when I read stories like that. Yet... I always wonder, is it really easier to lose a child when there is someone to blame for it and that person is punished for it? Is there peace and restitution in revenge?

I understand that kind of loss to a degree, I held my own son in my arms as he slowly died in a hospital a few years ago. It was deeply painful and I still cry sometimes at the memory... yet there was nobody to blame, he died of a congenital defect, nature killed him, not another person... would my grief had been diminished, though, if there was someone to blame instead of some thing, some illness? Would I have healed better if another life had been destroyed in payment for our loss?

Somehow... I don't think so... so, I guess that's the reason why the idea of justice being about punishment gets lost on me at times. Maybe I'm simple minded in that regard, but I just don't see the connection. Sure, I don't want people who harm others left on the street to freely harm others, but removing someone from society and rehabilitating them or treating their mental illnesses solves that, torturing them only seems to make them less human and more sadistic.

Ah, well, my thoughts are likely just more fuel for people to hate and despise me with though. So I'll stop there for now.

Police Cameras 2: Recording The Cops

Gosline, a white man in his mid-20s, says he used his cell phone to take photographs as officers beat Alley-Barnes with fists and nightsticks along the knees, torso, and face and bashed his head repeatedly into the asphalt. Then, Gosline says, another cop appeared, pepper-sprayed him in the face and hauled him and three friends up to the East Precinct on 12th Avenue. There, Gosline says, the officers confiscated his phone, which they returned when he was released early Wednesday morning. When he opened it again, he says, the photographs were gone. -"Face Off" The Stranger Weekly 04/21/05

As we've noted before, the city enjoys recording it's citizens on a regular basis and has been investing millions of dollars on even more surveillance technologies, but it's always had a very big problem allowing it's citizens to keep an eye on them, especially it's own problematic police department.

In addition to refusing to put cameras in the areas of police precincts where detainees are transported or held in order to ensure their rights are not violated, the city allows officers to control when their dashcams are recording. Additionally the city also has a record of refusing FOIA requests regarding police disciplinary activities and it constantly fails to discipline officers for violating the rights of innocent bystanders and detainees alike... All in all, Seattle is likely one of the most restrictive cities for it's size in the US in regards to civil rights.

Well, some of you may have read the story in the newspaper or at least noticed the news item in our "Seattle Misconduct News" links on the sidebar, but the city has supposedly clarified the policy for how bystanders are to be treated when they witness or take photographs of police activity.

Of course, the refined policy is the result of the lawsuit against the city that was settled last year in response to a bystander being arrested when he would not relinquish his camera to officers when they demanded it after he legally took photographs of an arrest in progress.

Of course, while we would like to see this actual policy in order to determine what loopholes were left in it for officers, especially since the ACLU of Washington State was a party to the refinement and they don't have a very good history of helping government entities write policies that protect the rights of detainees; after all, they didn't do a good job protecting detainee rights at the King County Jail when they helped the county rewrite their policies... but so far the exact wording of this new policy has been kept secret.

Indeed, given the number of allegations of some very blatant abuses of authority used by Seattle police officers to destroy evidence of misconduct and detain witnesses of abusive behavior, it's clear that any such policy needs to be iron-clad. However, given the city's willingness to weaken oversight and accountability reforms under pressure from the police union and dismantling of the civilian oversight system that monitored SPD internal investigations, it seems as though this is merely yet another PR effort.

In fact, one only needs to read a few of the comments under the article about this new policy to see allegations of how Seattle Police officers illegally intimidate witnesses of brutality, something probably not covered in their new policy:

From "Vinella" in response to the Seattle PI article:

I once watched a confrontation between police officers and an unarmed black man waiting on a bus on Stewart Street behind the old Frederick & Nelson Building. I was across the street in my pizza restaurant, making lunch, when the guy, who had been standing there for at least ten minutes, reading a book, suddenly threw his hands up in the air and went bug-eyed. Ten cops descended on him, guns drawn, shouting things even I could hear through my windows. They shouted for him to get face down and the guy kept on asking why. Finally, he got down on his stomach and the officers felt obliged to administer a few swift kicks in the ribs and one club shot to his head while he was lying prone. I watched the whole thing, until they had him subdued and in custody. I grabbed one of my business cards and walked across the street. I gave the guy the card and offered, in full view and earshot of the officers, to testify on his behalf when he went to court. Then I left.

Within 15 seconds, three cops were in my shop, all badgering me about helping the guy. "You don't know what you saw!", one kept shouting. "You don't even know why we were arresting him!", said the other. Finally, I told all three to shut up and reminded them they were in MY shop without MY permission. "What I KNOW is that I watched a guy read a book for ten minutes, minding his own business, and then you guys come in and force him to the pavement, kick him and club him, when he is IN NO WAY resisting arrest. If the guy was so freakin' guilty of something, WHY would he spend ten minutes reading a book on a busy city street, and not be running somewhere to hide?" They continued to argue until I finally grabbed my phone and dialed the Chief's office to report them. THAT'S what I see from the Seattle P.D., not the calm, clear-eyed, unruffled professionalism so many claim to practice...

Given reported events of witness intimidation and wrongful confiscation of photographic evidence like these and a lack of accountability for the officers who violate the rights of bystanders and detainees, it's doubtful that this highly publicized "new policy" is anything other than yet more smoke and mirrors to cover for all the bad press the city has been getting for it's failure to control it's own police force and protect the rights of it's citizenry.

About That Poor Pay And Underappreciation

The Seattle Police Officer's Union and their supporters use the same refrain over and over again in their battle against accountability reforms: that the SPD doesn't pay enough to keep officers and that they cannot recruit officers because the city wants to improve the police accountability system. They argue that demanding more accountability and less misconduct will somehow scare away good recruits and that offering more money instead will somehow convince bad officers to behave better.

Some journalists agree with the guild and have put pressure on the city to inact huge pay raises and to hire more officers before trying to fix the broken accountability system at the guild's behest. This has pressured the city into considering lower standards for recruits and dropping accountability reforms just to boost ranks despite a string of public relations fiascos due to officer misconduct and brutality. Of course, it makes no sense to reward bad behavior... if it did we would give criminals cash instead of jail terms.

Well, it appears that the guild's argument hasn't reached the ears of officers elsewhere because New York police officers view Seattle as a police officer's utopia compared to their beats and are signing up by droves to make the cross-country transfer. They say the starting salary is AWESOME and that the command structure and officials support their officers MUCH MORE than NYC officials and managers do!

...and we better beware because the same problems that happened in NYC could happen here, a lowering of standards that causes more misconduct problems, which causes less support from the community, which causes labor disputes which are resolved in arbitration instead of at the bargaining table, which results in lower salaries and more distrust.

From the New York Daily News:

The pitch is simple: Seattle pays its new hires nearly twice as much as the NYPD.

And if that's not enough, they'll throw in another $5,000 to cover moving expenses...

NYPD recruits get a paltry $25,100 annual salary while they are in the academy. Their pay jumps to $32,800 after graduation and tops out at $59,588 after seven years.

Considering it costs about 20% more to live in New York City than Seattle, NYPD officers would have to earn about $80,000 to maintain the same standard of living as in Seattle.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has blamed the department's starting salary for hurting recruitment. The pay scale was imposed by an arbitration panel in 2005 after the city and police union couldn't reach a deal.

Where it gets interesting is in the comments, like this one...

"What the reporter failed to mention is that the mayor and politicians actually praise the cops for their work in seattle. Here in the city the mayor shouts "Do more with less!!! Less cars, less cops, lower salary!!! BUT Keep the crime rate Low!! Oh yeah!! One last thing!!! If you take police action its up to me and the rest of the politicians to decide if you go in front of a grand jury. Our decisions depend on what side of the bed we wake up on!!!!"

...and more just like it telling the tales of NYPD officers who made the transfer and LOVE IT HERE.

Police Accountability Jeopardized By Editorial Spin

Just days after running a stunning series of articles that served to expose several instances of institutionalized misconduct within the Seattle Police Department, the Seattle Post Intelligencer issued forth an unfortunate opinion piece from it's own editorial staff entitled "Seattle Police: Healing Reviews".

This flawed editorial is full of apologetic spin and questionable assertions in an apparent attempt to kowtow to the police department and the Seattle Police Officer's Guild. While this is understandable given the intense pressure from and threats made from officers and members of the police guild in response to the series; it is still regrettable because it only serves to nullify any possible progress the investigative reporting might have brought to the city's desperate efforts to bring about police accountability reforms against the fierce opposition by the police guild.

Within this flawed editorial, the editors cite one of their own paper's articles that served to demonstrate the utter powerlessness of the police department's own internal investigative branch, the Office of Professional Accountability (OPA), by showing that it is only capable of making recommendations and not investigating problems on it's own, here they state:

"It's encouraging that a ranking officer promised last week that a systematic review of some obstruction arrests would be recommended. In the context of other changes being made by the department, even the rather limited pledge speaks to continuing efforts to improve accountability, professionalism and community relations."

A limited pledge indeed... in fact, it's a pledge that means absolutely nothing at all because even if the OPA's recommendation was followed and an investigation found evidence of wrongdoing, the guild will simply step in and refuse to allow the city to discipline any officers, which it can do because such investigative findings could not be used to discipline officers because it would go against their contract with the city.

This brings us to another flawed part of this editorial which states:

"In a sweeping reorganization announced last week, Chief Gil Kerlikowske created a new Office of Ethics and Professional Responsibility, which will be headed by a veteran officer with a reputation as a disciplinarian."

This misstates the importance of the new office of ethics which is actually just as powerless as the OPA since it can only make recommendations as well... it cannot actually DO anything about misconduct at all. Therefore, this new Office Of Ethics and Professional Responsibility isn't much of a "sweeping change", especially without all of the other 28 recommended accountability changes made by the mayor's review panel (PARP), the same recommendations that the guild has fought tooth and nail.

This brings us to the unfortunate falsehood in the editorial, here:

"Those steps follow on impressive efforts by Mayor Greg Nickels, Kerlikowske and, to some extent, the police guild to follow up on an accountability task force's recommendations."

There are NO indications anywhere that the guild has done anything other than fight the recommended accountability reforms and it has completely denied that any problems exist in the department whatsoever as a basis for it's resistance against accountability reforms.

We call on the Seattle Post Intelligencer to cite a specific case of the guild making any effort whatsoever to improve the police misconduct accountability process within the Seattle Police Department that it wasn't forced to accept via arbitration in early 2000's when contract negotiations broke down over the guild's utter refusal to accept accountability reforms... just as they did this time as well.

The unfortunate fact is that they cannot, there is no effort that the guild has undertaken at any time to "bring about healing" by improving police accountability and professionalism, in fact they've only fought against such efforts to heal the gigantic rift that exists between the Seattle Police Department and the community that they supposedly serve.

Healing any injury requires that we identify that injury, diagnose it's cause, and then commit to a treatment plan... Sadly, such irresponsible pieces of journalistic bias only serve to further injure the relationship between the police and the community by pretending that placing a colorful bandaid over a deep and festering wound is all the healing we need.

Great Series At The Seattle Post Intelligencer

If you need any more reasons to demand that the Seattle Police Officer's Guild stop obstructing the city's efforts to introduce accountability reforms, read the new series of reports at The Seattle Post Intelligencer called "The Strong Arm Of The Law".

I truly hope they keep at it, there's a lot more to report and it shows how badly Seattle's current system of unaccountability is utterly broken (which is why we don't recommend using it). They've been threatened repeatedly by the guild already, so we'll see if they cave into the pressure or not... we hope not.

While we doubt they'll find how extensive the problem is, like how SPD officers conspire with King County Jail guards to torture detainees by withholding medical treatment for designated prisoners after they've been injured, as in The Funhouse Case... but we hope they find whatever they can find and expose the deep-rooted problem with corruption and abuse that exists in the Seattle Police Department.

Coming up in their series:

Friday, Feb. 29: The West Precinct Anti-Crime Team is a nimble strike force that is used effectively to combat crime, Seattle Police Department officials say. But one defense lawyer says the team sometimes "creates crime" in its interactions with citizens. (We covered that here a few months ago)

Coming Saturday, March 1: He was arrested for obstructing a public officer after police say he was urinating in a park. Prosecutors declined to press charges. So how did this Seattle man remain in jail for months?

Keep at it guys, and thanks for your efforts!

UPDATE: The story about the SPD "Anti-Crime Teams" is up, quite a doozy. (we wrote about them a few months ago after the Marc Hays jaywalking case) Be warned, some of the photos of their victims are rather graphic, especially the picture of the elderly man they beat until his spleen ruptured.

Again, I would post more about it but there is too much detail and it'll take me a while to process all of it... sorry, but my brain just doesn't work as well as it used to, I really wish it did.

Copy Cat Cops Revisited

A while ago I posted about how Bainbridge Island cops were being sued by a lawyer who was manhandled by a cop for giving her husband legal advice over, what ultimately boiled down, to nothing more than a speeding ticket. While it wasn't a Seattle story per se, it tied in with a Seattle story of a woman having her face broken by a Seattle cop for giving a friend legal advice.

...but this led to some rather strange coincidences.

First, I didn't notice when I wrote the piece, but the lawyers in question are actually listed in our miconduct lawyer links section. I've never talked to them, but they were listed on the internet as civil rights lawyers specializing in police misconduct cases so there they are. For those that tell me that critics are less likely to face retaliation for making complaints of police brutality, I guess it appears that not even lawyers are safe from police retaliation here.

But, more than this, somebody posted a link to this site from the Kitsap Sun's website where, apparently, they published a disengenuous article about the incident where they never talked to the woman who was abused nor her attorneys, but comletely took the police department's side of the story. What resulted was the paper falsely stating that her husband had been charged with drunk driving, reckless driving, and speeding and that the woman was also drunk... When the facts were that the only charge that the prosecutor could find evidence to support was speeding and that the two were never tested for nor charged with a drinking related offense.

More than this... The chief of that department is quoted as saying, in the 20 year veteran officer's defense, that he "has incurred no other complaints in at least a year"! If that's not a glowing recommendation... well, never mind, it isn't.

So these lawyers, both without any criminal records and otherwise known as upstanding members of the community, are being villified in the press by police on behalf of an officer who "hasn't had an incident of reported misconduct in at least a year" and who now stands accused of physically assaulting and sexually touching a female lawyer who did nothing more than try to give her husband, who did nothing more than speed, legal advice.

This is what ultimately happens, both here and everywhere else... The people victimized by police who abuse their authority are stuck with legal defense bills, are humiliated and dehumanized by the justice system, and even when declared innocent they are put on trial again by the media and villified again by the same officers and police department that abused them in the first place... and ultimately left without a voice with which to defend themselves against this kind of vicious and brutal assault that can destroy their reputations and their lives.

Something smells fishy on that island... But unfortunately it's nothing new, these cops are using the same tactics they use here and everywhere else that police abuse is condoned. I wish the couple all the best.

UPDATE: Just checked through the original blog I cited for the original story and they definitely beat me to the punch about this story by days and in a much better post than what I put up... Credit where credit is due, and it's due for the Bainbridge Notebook blog.

Police Guild's Constant Battle Against Accountability

As the Seattle Police Officer's Guild prepares to march on City Hall, presumably sometime next month, their complaints should be viewed in a historical context. Indeed, for several decades the police officer's union in Seattle (SPOG) has been fighting reforms to oversight and accountability and tying those to it's demands for more pay... and historically winning both battles in contract negotiations.

Indeed, in 1974 SPOG complained that instating limitations on their use of deadly force would spell the end of civilization in Seattle and insisted that their officers needed no guidlines after it was discovered that over 40% of police shooting victims were unarmed, some of which were minors. The city initially insisted that police be authorized to use deadly force only for self defense and the defense of others, but caved and ultimately allowed officers to use deadly force when apprehending anyone suspected of a violent felony.

In 1999 public outcry over police misconduct associated with the WTO protests and several cases of misconduct forced the city to implement civilian oversight into the police accountability equation. Several studies were done and in January 2001 the city entered negotiations with the Guild. By May of 2001 the city had removed nearly all recommendations for accountability reform from it's contract proposal to SPOG. However, SPOG members rejected the contract, which included a 3.5% raise, which allowed the city to retry adding accountability as a bargaining chip against calls for more money.

The two sides entered arbitration and the result was a severely weakened husk of the proposed and recommended accoutability and civilian oversight system that was enacted in November 2001. This is the same system which still suffers from the same limitations today thanks to the guild's constant battle against any attempts to fix the loophole-ridden accountability process... and the guild still got more money in exchange for weakened reforms in what many people called outright extortion by the guild over the public's demands for police oversight.

Indeed, nothing significant has changed since November 2001, but in the summer of 2007, several cases of misconduct that were overturned by the police chief for no stated reason and the release of a video tape that called the testimony of two officers involved in a drug bust into question sparked public outcry for better police accountability again.

Two panels were formed, the OPARP by the mayor and the SCCPAP by the city council, to review the current oversight system and give recommendations to fix it. Some recommendations from the SCCPAP were legislated into existance but have been beaten back by the Guild through litigation. The 29 recommendations from the OPARP are in similar limbo now as the SPOG insists it will not even consider negotiating any accountability reforms until 2010.

Now, in 2008, the guild has refused an offer by the city of an outrageous pay hike of 33.9% for it's members in exchange for allowing the accountability reforms to go forward, going so far as to threaten pickets and lawsuits since the city has made the contract offer public... Again, the guild is insisting that it have an outlandish pay raise that would make them the best paid in the region while utterly refusing to allow abusive officers to be held accountable.

So remember, when you see those pickets crying for more money without any accountability concessions, that the guild has always had its cake and always got to eat it as well... perhaps this time the public should demand a different outcome.

*updated 02/26/08

We Need More Investigative Stories Like These!

The Seattle Post Intelligencer had a couple of pretty good investigative articles this week about corruption at the Seattle Police Department, specifically their failure to hold officers accountable for misconduct. Their first story came on Tuesday, "Cops Who Lie Don't Always Lose Jobs" which centered on cases of dishonesty in sworn statements by officers that went undisciplined in Seattle, specifically, of 13 cases where the actual finding of dishonesty was sufficient to have normally deserved dismissal, nobody was dismissed.

The follow-up article, "The Strong Arm Of The Law" that came out yesterday examined how the Seattle Police Department hasn't disciplined any officers for unnecessary force in the past 18 months, during a time when it ruled on at least 161 force cases. During that same period, 12 other excessive-force complaints resulted in supervisory intervention with officers (supervisory intervention means the officer was referred to additional training).

This second article goes on to focus on one officer involved in three cases of excessive force during that time period, one of those cases involved the officer performing a combination arm hold and leg sweep from behind on a 125 lb unarmed female with a clean record that resulted in the woman being sent face first to the sidewalk and then to an operating table with compound facial fractures that almost left her blind... all because she yelled legal advice to a friend of her's who the officer arrested.

...of this training the officers were sent to, the trainer criticized the officer in this incident for not being aggressive enough!

Let me say this again... The Seattle Police Department sends Officers who are found to be guilty of excessive force to a martial arts trainer for retraining and that trainer insists officers are not being excessive enough with their use of force!

In any case, I was hoping that the Seattle PI wasn't done with this series of reports, but since there wasn't anything new today, I'm thinking they are... even though I know there are a lot more things that the SPD does that it shouldn't.

But, in any case... Be safe out there, because those officers found guilty of brutality are being trained to be even more brutal by the SPD.

Of The OPARP Report and Media Bias

Before I offer an analysis of Mayor Greg Nickels' Police Accountability Review Panel's report and the reactions to it, I wanted to stop for a bit and help everyone process how the report was reported on and maybe demonstrate why this site, and blogs in general, can help people grasp the nuances that can be missed in mainstream media reporting.

Of course, this site is intended to be more than just a storehouse for reported issues of police misconduct and detainee abuses in Seattle, it's also meant to be a place where people can report instances of misconduct and get information to help protect themselves from Seattle's aggressive police force, especially for tourists and new residents who may not know about the misconduct problems here.

Anyway, as you may know the Police Accountability Review Panel, that was formed by the mayor of Seattle to review the oversight and accountability processes in Seattle after several high-profile cases of police misconduct went unpunished last year, released it's final report yesterday. After the release city officials, panel members, and police union representatives all gave their opinions on the report and it's 29 recommendations.

However, each media outlet had a slightly different take on what the accountability and oversight foe, the police union, had to say about the report... and some outlets didn't even say anything at all.

Of Seattle's 2 major daily newspapers, 3 major television outlets, two major independent weekly papers, and numerous blogs; the following was reported:

The Seattle Times gave a pretty balanced and well written report and did a fair job explaining that the Seattle Police Officer's Guild (SPOG) refuses to consider the oversight reforms during current contract negotiations, instead they might consider negotiating some of the reforms in 2010, it also presented the city's and the panel's positions in a detailed manner as well.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer offered a very different and somewhat pro-SPOG perspective by suggesting SPOG was eager to discuss the reforms with the city while it gave the city's and panel's concerns very short shrift in a rather one-sided piece of reporting.

King 5 News did a very in-depth piece that gave detailed interviews with all sides which revealed that SPOG's position was clearly that it felt there was no real need for these reforms and that it intended to fight the reforms unless they are negotiated in contract talks, but will only negotiate those terms several years from now. It also reported that city officials are insisting that they are going to be assertive about implementing these reforms, and that panel members have pleaded with the union to not hinder these reforms to no avail.

KOMO 4 News only briefly mentioned that SPOG will not accept any changes unless they are negotiated and was very sparce on details, giving the issue very little consideration overall.

KIRO 7 News refused to report on the story.

The Stranger Weekly and it's blog refused to report on the story.

The Seattle Weekly and it's blog refused to report on the story.

All other Seattle blogs refused to report on the story.

So, as you can tell, sifting through all these different reports is required in order to get the whole story since there are so many biases involved with issues surrounding police misconduct and accountability. Most people are very biased towards having absolute trust in police officers, it's ingrained into our psyches at a very young age and it flows through the reporting done by many Seattle reporters and media outlets. So it takes a great deal of effort and time to sift through all the information to find the truth of the matter.

That's why I see this site as filling a vital role, especially here in Seattle when one paper or station will report on a story of misconduct and the others will completely ignore it, like this case or this case or this case which were only reported at one place for example. But also to sift through the contradictory reports and find the heart of the issue and give it more analysis than general interest news outlets would.

Police misconduct, accountability, and detainee abuses are very serious erosions of constitutionally protected rights in the US, it slowly corrupts the entire premise upon which the American government and society were based and can utterly destroy lives and families without just cause and without recourse when allowed to continue unabated. These are very serious issues that must be reported on and thouroughly analyzed or else it will cause the foundations of our society to slowly rot away.

I wish I didn't have to write about this stuff, I'm not the best person to do it because of my condition... but nobody else in Seattle does it consistently... so I do.

Let me know if there's a way I can do it better... not for my sake, but for your's.