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: Injustice in Seattle

Copy Cat Cops Revisited

By David Packman

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.

Full post as published by Injustice in Seattle on February 15, 2008 (boomark / email).