Bad Cops & Prosecutors

Oregon Judge Rules Cops Are Not Above The Law

Posted on July 24, 2008
Attorney Eric Bryant presents testimony at hearing over his citizen's citation issued against police officer -photo attributed to The Portland Mercury A Portland Oregon judge has ruled that Portland police officer Chadd Stensgaard must pay a $35 fine for illegally parking his police cruiser in a no parking zone when he went to get sushi during his break and was issued a citation from a citizen for it...

Seattle Police Arrest Superman

Posted on July 23, 2008
file this one under random Seattle weirdnessKING 5 News is reporting that the Seattle Police have detained a man wearing a Superman costume today on an unspecified outstanding warrant after he allegedly made threats to abduct a baby near a cafe on 3rd and Pike...

New Police Blog Praises Old Jail Accreditation

Posted on July 23, 2008
The Seattle Post Intelligencer's new (and pretty biased) police blog recently praised the King County Correctional Facility (aka KCCF or King County Jail) for obtaining a National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCHCC) accreditation for detainee medical care...

Ah, Birthdays

Posted on July 20, 2008
I wasn't going to post about it, but it's my 38th birthday today.How did I start it out so far? Well, found out a friend was stabbed the night before during a mugging and refused to go to the hospital because he didn't want to be hassled by the police and he doesn't like doctors...

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Seattle Vigilantism Turns Deadly

Posted on July 16, 2008
Depiction of a group of vigilante "baldknobbers" from the 1919 movie "The Sheppard Of The Hills".Baldknobbers were groups of vigilantes in Arkansas and Missouri who were responsible not only for attacking horse thieves, but also murdering their critics and their families, as well as several racially motivated lynchings in the mid to late late 1800's and early 1900's...

How Many Lawsuits, Seattle?

Posted on July 15, 2008
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...

Thank You

Posted on July 14, 2008
It's been yet another busy weekend for me and Monday is looking pretty full as well, so I apologize for the light posting again. Since I don't have much time for a full story now, I just wanted to make a quick post about thanks...First I want to mention the people who write to tell us their own stories of police misconduct or detainee abuse...

Seattle Public Safety Committee Meeting Tomorrow

Posted on July 14, 2008
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...

Seattle Settles Yet Another Excessive Force Suit

Posted on July 14, 2008
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)...

Some Advice For Those Looking For Justice

Posted on July 11, 2008
The Vice of Injustice and Virtue of Justicefrescoes at the Arena Chapel in Padua by GiottoEver since I started this site I've received letters from people who have had their rights violated or have been through similar or worse abuse than I was put through...

Miscellaneous News

Posted on July 10, 2008
Just some random news items for you so far today...Seattle Police OversightThe 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)...

Answering An Injustice With Injustice

Posted on July 08, 2008
I'll be the first to admit, despite learning first hand that no good deed goes unpunished, that I don't like seeing bad things happen to people and I am usually the first to intervene in order to stop something I think is wrong. This problematic behavior on my part isn't limited to what happened a bit over a year ago, it goes back quite some ways and even continues today...

The Frustration Of Missed Opportunities For Change

Posted on July 08, 2008
I got a really disturbing report today that I'm working on about a frustrating and utterly appalling case of yet more brutal detainee abuse in the King County Jail . It's occurring at the same damn time that the Department of Justice is still wrangling with the King County government over the deadly constitutional violations it found when it investigated that jail...

SPD Officer Shoots Unarmed Attorney Three Times And Then Sues Him

Posted on July 05, 2008
In June of 2006, an off-duty undercover Seattle Police officer, then member of an SPD "proactive policing" Anti-Crime Team (ACT), was driving his motorcycle down a dual-use pedestrian and vehicular alleyway behind Pike Place Market where several nearby taverns were sending their patrons home for the night at the time...

Happy Independence Day

Posted on July 03, 2008
First, I want to wish everyone out there a happy and safe Fourth of July holiday weekend.Many of you, I hope, have never experienced how frightening and oppressive it can feel to have your freedom forcibly taken away from you. I know it's something I never expected to experience in my lifetime, and something I hope that you do not experience either...

More Evidence Of Police Misconduct Cover Ups In Seattle

Posted on July 02, 2008
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...

A Possible Police Investigation Cover-Up

Posted on July 02, 2008
The public release of the OPA investigation into my complaints concerning what happened to me in November of 2006 has generated some renewed interest in my case, and there seem to be some good reasons for that.First, this finding took over 200 days (well past the 180 deadline for investigations that, if expired, results in automatic exoneration) for the SPD OPA to produce...

Funhouse Case Update: The OPA Process From A Civilian POV

Posted on June 30, 2008
Just to give you an idea of what it's like to be on this side of the OPA misconduct investigation process... This was a comment left from the City of Seattle network, the same MO as the cop that always leaves me rude messages as he always starts it out by calling me out by last name...

Poll Results

Posted on June 30, 2008
Well, as you may have noticed, I ran a little poll to see what readers would like to see more of from me. The results are final and here's what you had to say:First, the most votes expressed a desire that the site would be killed off and that I would be arrested for creating it...

When Numbers Gamble With People's Lives

Posted on June 27, 2008
Since the mid-1990s, Washington State jail populations have increased exponentially. Obsolete facilities built decades ago to hold a handful of prisoners are now packed like sardine tins, with as many prisoners sleeping on the floor as in bunks. Overcrowding has resulted in numerous problems in terms of security and meeting prisoner medical needs...

Get Out!

Posted on June 27, 2008
It?s a rare nice day outside here in Seattle. Don?t sit there and read this stuff. Get outside and play! If you don?t have kids, go outside and be a kid for a while. If you have kids, go outside and be a kid with your kids. One of the unfortunate lessons I learned with everything that happened to me last year and I was taken away from my family so suddenly was that you never know when you won?t have the chance to be a part of your children?s memories, to be a part of their lives and share their joy...

The Sad State Of Affairs In Seattle

Posted on June 25, 2008
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...

Some Confessions

Posted on June 25, 2008
First, a story came out from The Stranger that caught my eye about how city councilman and ex-cop Tim Burgess and his Public Safety committee is planning to revise the city?s obstruction laws to put them more in line with the more ambiguous state laws that give officers more leeway to make arrests for obstruction...

For All You Lurker Lawyers

Posted on June 24, 2008
While doing the blog rounds this weekend I found out from the Washington Criminal Defense blog that the second annual "Seattle Law Blogger Meet-up" sponsored by AVVO will be held Thursday, June 26, from 5:30pm until 7:30pm at AVVO's downtown Seattle offices...

What I Did Today

Posted on June 24, 2008
Well, I spent the day today writing my last post for this site.No, I?m not quitting...My "last post" is a post that I?ve postdated in case something were to happen to me. I wrote it just in case the people who think I should be arrested, or worse, for what I write finally follow through with that desire...

New Poll and Stuff

Posted on June 23, 2008
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...

PARP Implementation: Final Analysis

Posted on June 22, 2008
I've done some further review of the contract (released yesterday) that was negotiated between the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officer's Guild and compared the language in that agreement with the PARP police accountability recommendations implementation plan set forth by Seattle mayor Greg Nickels which listed 11 of the 29 recommendations that must be negotiated with the guild in order to achieve full implementation...

The SPD Contract vs The PARP Recommendations

Posted on June 20, 2008
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...

The SCCPAP Report On Police Accountability In Seattle

Posted on June 20, 2008
The Seattle City Council Police Accountability Panel (SCCPAP) report has been submitted to council and is part of the public record, though it has not been officially released to the press at this time and there is no indication if it will have an official press release like the mayor's Police Accountability Review Panel (PARP) did...

The Views Of SCCPAP Member Eric Schnapper

Posted on June 20, 2008
As an addendum to the SCCPAP Report, released earlier today, is a commentary/summary by Professor Eric Schnapper. Professor Schnapper currently teaches Civil rights, Civil Procedure, and Employment Discrimination at the University of Washington law school...

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