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: Injustice in Seattle

Police Union Defends An Officer With A History

By David Packman

The SPD announced yesterday that police chief Gil Kerlikowske finally terminated the employment of a veteran SPD police officer of 29 years. The reasons given for the rare firing were that this officer had used unjustified excessive force, lied to investigators during the investigation into the incident, and then he tried to influence another officer to change his statement about the incident.

The Seattle Police Officer's Guild and at least one other blogger are already trying to spin what happened to defend this officer by focusing on the incident in question. They call the complaintant untrustworthy and say there was no obvious sign of injury. But, those people are ignoring his long history of misconduct and the fact that he lied to investigators about the incident, an incident they claim wasn't a big deal... but was somehow still worth lying about.

But, those people are also hoping we ignore this officer's long history of misconduct.

In 1986 the same officer was nearly fired in a more famous incident that helped spark the creation of the current Seattle police civilian oversight system when he reportedly attempted to steal a diamond ring from a corpse. A disciplinary panel voted to fire him over the theft charges, but the chief at the time stepped in and reduced his punishment to a brief suspension.

However, in 2004 this same officer got in trouble for interfering with yet another misconduct investigation by instructing another officer not to answer any questions and to warn him about any questions asked about that investigation.

Also, in 2005, he lost a vacation day as discipline for accepting "numerous cases" of soda, meat, and other goods from vendors at a local event while working off-duty, but in his uniform.

...and now he's lied to investigators again, and the union will appeal to give him yet another chance to betray the public's trust and further tarnish the reputations of his peers at the Seattle Police Department. It isn't like he's facing a years of incarceration, he's not looking at having a criminal record, he isn't going to be taken into an interrogation cell and beaten, he isn't going to get sent to the King County Jail to be abused...

No, he's losing his job, something that happpens to most of us civilians at least once in our lives... More than that,he is being fired because of SOMETHING HE DID WRONG, SOMETHING A CIVILIAN WOULD HAVE BEEN BROUGHT UP ON CHARGES OF ASSAULT FOR!

AND HE'S STILL GOING TO GET HIS PENSION!

So... Let's keep things in persective here, the bad cop is still getting off easy for committing crimes he did, but the union wants everyone to give him yet another chance. The Police Guild wants us to hold their members to a different standard, a LOWER standard than we hold ourselves, that they hold us to.

They want the public to forgive their transgressions against them because their jobs are so hard. Sound familiar? Sound like the same excuses criminals use to try and get out of punishment for their crimes? Have you tried to get out of a ticket by telling an officer your life was hard? Get out of an assault or theft charge that way? The police do, you don't.

Certainly seems as though the union doesn't care as much about the public's perception of them, their member officers, or the Seattle Police Department as much as they say they do... But that's the point, they don't care, and that should really bother you more than you know because of the power these people are granted, all without any REAL accountability.

Full post as published by Injustice in Seattle on February 09, 2008 (boomark / email).