Bad Cops & Prosecutors

A Busy Seattle Police Misconduct News Day

Posted on February 14, 2008
Today was a fairly busy news day in regards to police misconduct in Seattle.First there was the Mark Hays trial results, as mentioned below.Then there was the $20,000 police brutality settlement (was that only what the city paid or the total settlement?) in the Claxton case, as mentioned on the sidebar...

Mark Hays Case Update: Hays Found Guilty

Posted on February 13, 2008
The Stranger reports that Mark Hays was found guilty of obstruction and assaulting an officer today, after days of jury deliberation and despite reports that several independent witnesses contradicted police assertions that Hays had attempted to tackle an officer prior to the video taped vicious beating Hays received from undercover officers stemming from nothing more than a jaywalking offense...

Police Guild's Constant Battle Against Accountability

Posted on February 13, 2008
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...

Politics

Posted on February 11, 2008
This blog isn't really about politics, except when it applies to civil rights and police accountability. As such, we weren't going to put any endorsements out there in regards to the national elections and/or primaries.But, the more we thought about it, the more we started to think about how the race might impact the issues of civil rights and police accountability...

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Police Union Defends An Officer With A History

Posted on February 09, 2008
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...

Cops On The March

Posted on February 08, 2008
Looks like the Seattle Police Officer's Guild is organizing an "informational picket line" at city hall. The date of the police protest march has not yet been made public.Citizens fed up with abusive officers and all the money they cost the city's tax payers should organize an informational picket of their own to tell city hall and SPOG members that we don't want to reward officers with pay raises for their bad behavior and their consistent refusal to accept accountability reforms...

About that advice...

Posted on February 07, 2008
Last month I posted some advice based on one of the steps I take to address my own concerns for my personal safety in regards to my own justified fear of police retaliation. Being that I always have my cellphone on me and a number I know will be recorded on speed dial...

Boycott The OPA?

Posted on February 06, 2008
Well, it isn't a call for a boycott per se, just a recommendation against using it until it is fixed. (see the post below this one)Why?http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/349469_force31.htmlhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/349169_lying29.htmlhttp://thepapernoose...

Misconduct Links Update

Posted on February 05, 2008
We'll be changing the links layout over the next few days, but I wanted to highlight one change in particular at least.Due to the apparent refusal of the Seattle Police Officers Guild to consider accepting all of the OPARP review recommendations to improve police misconduct accountability improvments AS IS, this site has decided to strongly recommend against reporting police abuses through the Seattle Police Department's Office of Professional Accountability (SPD OPA) until further notice...

More on Seattle's Police Accountability Efforts

Posted on February 05, 2008
The Stranger's SLOG is gloating about how it predicted the eventual outcome of Mayor Greg Nickels' OPARP review recommendations, in that they wouldn't be able to be implemented because of the police guild.But, what might be more interesting than the article itself is some of the comments, especially this one by LH:"The Seattle Times reported that "Nickels said 15 recommendations would be implemented immediately by the city, including proposals for the OPA office to have its own budget, for the two oversight agencies to work more closely together and providing more training to staff who conduct internal investigations...

Help Wanted

Posted on February 05, 2008
Well, I've been thinking about taking a break from the blog for a while now, at least until I get started with rehabilitation for my injuries. Besides, the workload from my paying jobs is piling up, my headaches are getting to be intollerable and make it near impossible to concentrate, and it takes me forever to write posts that could probably be written much better by a chimpanzee in half the time and with less spelling errors...

Video of a Central District Traffic Stop

Posted on February 05, 2008
Someone at Normgregory.com posted a video taken of a traffic stop in the central district. While I agree that dispatching 6 SPD cruisers to pull over an elderly man for a traffic violation and then arresting him seems like overkill to me... (some witnesses stated the police made him come out at gunpoint)...

What Is Fair?

Posted on February 04, 2008
In the course of the debate over whether or not the current oversight and accountability system used in Seattle is working and whether the police union (SPOG) will allow recommendations made by two different oversight review panels to be put into place there is a common theme popping up from the police officer's and their union...

Copycat Cops

Posted on February 04, 2008
Sounds like nearby Bainbridge Island police officers are trying to take lessons from the Seattle Police Handbook on How to Brutalize Women Who Give People Legal Advice.It apears that a local area lawyer, Kim Koenig, is preparing to file suit against the department for police brutality and false imprisonment after she was choked, manhandled, groped, beaten, and then detained without just cause for an hour and a half before being released...

Censored

Posted on February 03, 2008
Well, folks, it appears that Blogger.com (the host of this site) has been at work censoring the site today. If you couldn't tell all of the images have been removed for an unstated reason, even the innocuous header image. So if the site goes down completely I apologise for that, it won't be me that shuts it down...

Police Brutality Is Departmental Policy

Posted on February 03, 2008
Reaction to the Seattle Post Intelligencer article on officers failing to be disciplined for brutality last week drew a storm of responses in that paper's online forums. While many were from citizens who were appalled by the stories of abusive behavior, there were also a number of responses from SPD officers who staunchly defended their right to abuse people when taking them into custody...

I Want To Do More

Posted on February 03, 2008
Lately I've been trying to think of what more I could do to help reduce police misconduct and detainee abuses. So if anyone has any suggestions please feel free to let me know... as long as it doesn't involve public speaking (I don't talk well anymore because of my head injuries) or my coming into any contact with a member of the Seattle Police Department because I'm sure they wouldn't have any problem finishing the job of slowly and torturously killing me like they tried to do last year...

OPARP Report Analysis

Posted on February 02, 2008
I've finally sifted through the mayor's review panel's report and while I think there are some changes in there that would be a good start, I think it does miss some of the more glaring problems and while it might improve things a little, it still leaves bad officers enough loopholes to keep on abusing citizens without being held accountable...

We Need More Investigative Stories Like These!

Posted on February 01, 2008
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...

DOJ Investigation of King County Jail "Still Active"

Posted on January 31, 2008
In November of 2007 the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division issued a scathing report about the unconstitutional conditions and treatment occurring at the King County Jail (KCCF) located in downtown Seattle, Washington. While this facility is managed by King County, it is used to house pre-trial detainees for the Seattle Police Department and other area law enforcement agencies...

Seattle To Appeal Anti-Oversight PERC Ruling

Posted on January 30, 2008
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels told reporters today that the city will appeal the PERC ruling in favor of the Seattle Police Officer's Guild that bars the city from allowing civilian police oversight agents from viewing unaltered disciplinary reports to identify patterns of misconduct and disciplinary gaps...

Of The OPARP Report and Media Bias

Posted on January 30, 2008
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...

The OPARP Report Has Been Released

Posted on January 29, 2008
The Seattle Mayor's OPARP committee has finally released the final report and recommendations regarding Seattle's police accountability and oversight system today. A PDF of the report is here for right now and the Seattle Times has published some details as well...

A Little More Advice

Posted on January 29, 2008
As you read this, remember that this cartoon was drawn by a Seattle Police Officer and that they think the idea of you having any rights is laughable.A while back I wrote a post offering some tips for people who find themselves in the unfortunate event of an interaction with members of the Seattle Police Department either as a potential victim of police misconduct or as a witness to police misconduct...

Regarding Lying Cops

Posted on January 29, 2008
Remember the preview of the mayor's OPARP review of Seattle's police oversight problems, where a few of the 29 total recommendations deal with officer dishonesty being an offense worthy of automatic termination?Well, the Seattle Post Intelligencer's investigative reporters Eric Nalder and Lewis Kamb just published a report about an investigation they performed into what happens to Seattle police officers who are found to have lied to investigators, fellow officers, the department, and on reports...

King County Review Panel Gives Sheriff Good Grades!

Posted on January 28, 2008
This is the kind of story that I like to write about, that I want to write about, police management doing what it takes to improve discipline and accountability and getting results. King County Sheriff Sue Rahr is doing what it takes to reign in officers that are involved in misconduct, according to an oversight panel established by King County to review King County Sheriff's department policies and procedures after scathing reports of misconduct were appearing one right after another in the local news...

Licata's Response to Anti-Accountability Ruling

Posted on January 28, 2008
Council member Nick Licata, the main proponent of a piece of police accountability legislation that was ruled against by the Washington state Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC) after the Seattle Police Officer's Guild (SPOG) complained has sent out his reaction to that ruling via a newsletter...

Analyzing The OPARP Report Preview

Posted on January 26, 2008
An interesting glimpse of the planned Office of Professional Accountability Review Panel's final report to Mayor Greg Nickels was revealed today by the Seattle Times, (see sidebar), even though it reportedly isn't due until January 29.The recommendations revealed so far seem to be on course and include: Expand the duties of the SPD Internal Investigation's Civilian Auditor to include more in-depth reviews of the SPD's internal affairs cases and to improve transparency of investigative findings for the public...

Police Guild Wins Ruling Against Accountability Efforts

Posted on January 25, 2008
UpdatedThe Public Employee Relations Commission (PERC) ruled in favor of the Seattle Police Officer's Guild (SPOG) to reverse Seattle city government's efforts to improve the police accountability process that were enacted after an onslaught of high-profile police misconduct cases inundated the city's police department with lawsuits and intense public scrutiny...

SPD Tries To Spread More... Thin Credibility -Updated

Posted on January 24, 2008
Yes, folks, I try not to swear on this blog. But the SPD is really spreading the manure on pretty thick concerning this story about an officer who crashed into a carload of teenage girls, sending their vehicle into an apartment building, and then smacking an SUV before coming to a stop...

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