About The Seattle Public Safety Civil Service Commission

The city of Seattle was recently forced to rehire a police officer who was charged with felony harassment and then plea bargained down to a misdemeanor harassment conviction after a jury deadlocked over an incident where the officer was accused of barging into the home of his ex-wife, shoving her, and then threatening her boyfriend while off-duty. Responses to the story both in the Seattle Post Intelligencer's message board and in the blogosphere have been pretty contentious with many Domestic Violence activists roundly condemning the decision by the Seattle Public Safety Civil Services Commission that forced the city to rehire the officer after he appealed the firing.

With rates of domestic violence involving police officers being higher than average when compared to the general population and many charges of bias during investigations into domestic violence accusations that involve police officers, this tends to be a very contentious issue. Many are now questioning just how much control the city has over it's embattled police force when the chief can't even make decisions about which officers to fire, let alone discipline.

While it's reasonable to expect that, before being convicted, any person should expect to be treated as innocent until proven otherwise... it's also true that in the private sector employees can be fired for just about any reason and often are once they have been accused of a crime. It's also true that problematic or criminal police officers can pose very serious and unique risks to society that ordinary citizens don't. Therefore, while the city's decision to fire the officer after he was accused but before he was convicted might have been wrong, it should have been able to put the officer on leave or administrative duty until the court outcome had been decided and then make a decision on his employment status.

However, the Seattle Public Safety Civil Service Commission apparently didn't give the city that option, stating instead that even after the conviction of a misdemeanor harassment charge the city shouldn't have been able to fire the officer and must give in to the officer's request to be rehired. Of course, this isn't the first time the commission has forced the city to rehire problematic officers and we've had a difficult time finding any cases where the commission didn't favor police officers who appealed disciplinary actions taken against them when appealed.

So, who are these commissioners, why is it that they favor police officers so heavily, and how is it that they have so much power over the city in regards to it's ability to discipline officers?

According to it's website, The Public Safety Civil Service Commission is made up of four people, one is appointed by the mayor, one by city council, one by the police union, and one by those other three members. As a result of the latest appointments, most have either some background as police officers or strong associations with police groups:

• Herb Johnson was appointed by Mayor Nickels and has served in the Seattle Police Department for 30 years both as an officer and as a temporary police chief.
• Joel Nark was appointed by the Police Guild and is currently a patrol officer in the Seattle Police Department.
• David Brown was appointed by the city council and sits on the board of directors of the Seattle Police Foundation which is a non-profit group formed after 9-11 with the stated goal of supporting the Seattle Police Department and it's officers. (note: the site lists his term as ending on 12/2007, but no new member was mentioned and the site was last updated on 4/2008)
  
• Mary Effertz appears to be the only member that doesn't have close ties to the police department that would bring up questions of bias. She previously worked for the city of Seattle in it's office of Civil Rights and taught journalism classes.

So, clearly, officers who appeal disciplinary actions by the city can likely expect some pretty preferential treatment by the commission, but how much authority does this commission have over the city in regards to how it manages it's police force?

Well, according the the commission's guide, the commissions decisions are binding and the city must comply unless it appeals to the Washington State Supreme Court. However, there are also other channels through which an officer can appeal disciplinary actions, which might be confusing to the average citizen who has few rights in regards to employment rights when compared to a police officer which would be expected to be held to a higher standard, but apparently isn't.

So, while many are venting their frustrations over this latest incident of the city's apparent unwillingness to discipline officers, in this case the deck is clearly stacked against the city, rendering it nearly unable to manage it's own police force... But, ultimately, it's still the city's fault for stacking the deck against itself by appointing apparently biased individuals to a commission that was meant to ensure that disciplinary actions against public employees were fair and unbiased.

A Tapestry Of Abuses Redux

I haven't posted for a while on purpose as I wanted to leave the previous post up top for a while. It's about how Seattle Police misconduct complaints are being dismissed out of hand and bypassing the OPA process. It seems that when the city refined rules that made it more difficult to excuse sustained findings of misconduct the department responded by skirting the investigative process so officers wouldn't be found guilty of misconduct.

But, let's move on... A while back I wrote a piece about different police abuse stories around the nation that sort of meshed together... some of those stories have some updates so, for those who were actually interested in those stories, I wanted to give some updates.

But first, some local news...

The Sturgis Shooting
The shooting incident involving off-duty Seattle Police Officers and a Hells Angel's MC member in Sturgis is still generating quite a bit of interest so I've been updating our coverage of the investigation and grand jury questioning that has been going on surrounding that event. For the latest summary of noteworthy updates, tune in here.

Ex-Cop Fugitive Arrested Near Seattle
An (now ex) Alabama police officer who's been charged with transporting children across state lines for sexual purposes, rape, possession of child pornography, and other related charges has been arrested in Lakewood, Wa, near Seattle on Monday. The officer appeared in federal court today shackled from head to toe because he had been trained in SWAT tactics and was deemed a dangerous prisoner.

He had fled Alabama once he was released on bond and had been staying at a friend's home nearby for nearly a month when he was finally found. After he fled, federal agents found that his car had been left at an Alabama airport and contained several weapons along with a handwritten note that said "they won't ever find me; six days (in jail) was unbearable for me."

...Guess he was mistaken.

Latest Lawsuit Against the SPD
The federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Michael Watson and his attorney John Kanin was lost last week. While Mr. Watson claimed to have been stunned by a Taser a dozen times and doctors confirmed at least that many burn marks on his torso, the police claimed they didn't shock him that much and that they did so in order to stop him from being combative. Apparently the jury sided with the officers after a week-long trial.

This is the first loss against the city after a long slate of highly publicized settlements and the very pricey loss on a civil rights case appeal by the city on what was originally a quarter of a million dollar lawsuit that bloomed into half a million dollar bill for the city after the legal fees were added. There are several more lawsuits in the works from others though, so we'll try to keep up to date with the latest as we become aware of it.

Now for those updates on the Tapestry stories...

The Death of Andre Thomas
Andre Thomas ended up dead after an encounter with Swissvale Pa. police earlier this month that started with him going door to door asking for help saying he was afraid someone was going to shoot him and ended with, as one witness detailed, police stunning him with a Taser and then punching him in the back of the head until he vomited and then remained motionless for several minutes.

An autopsy performed by Allegheny County coroner was said to be inconclusive with the coroner citing the highly questionable "excited delirium" (a cause of death that is strangely only associated with deaths in police custody) as the cause of death and that there was no evidence of excessive force. With toxicology results taking longer than usual to be released the family asked for an independent autopsy to be performed as well.

The independent autopsy revealed 17 bruises and wounds on Mr. Thomas' face and torso and a preliminary finding of death to be positional asphyxia, though further results are pending due to the county coroner refusing to give the independent coroner blood and other tissue samples. The independent examiner also canvased the neighborhood where the death occurred and said that witnesses say Mr. Thomas did nothing criminal that night, he only seemed to be knocking on doors and pleading for help...

I'm sure we'll hear more about this case in the future since the citizens of that city have been holding protests and rallies to demand a proper investigation into this questionable death in custody.

More from Prince Georges County
While the case of the mistaken raid on a mayor's home in Prince Georges County Maryland has dominated the news, shortly after the case of an accused cop killer being "inexplicably" strangled to death in custody, comes yet another troublesome story of a man who's death has two different stories, one from police and the other from witnesses of Manuel de Jesus Espina's death.

It appears, in this case, an off-duty officer working security had confronted Manuel, supposedly for public intoxication, in an apartment stairwell and depending on which account you believe, the two ended up in a struggle that took them into an apartment where two women claim to have witnessed what happened next... While the officer claims that Manual reached for either his gun or his baton, he's not certain which, and he shot Manuel in front of the two witnesses.

However, the witnesses give a different tale, saying that they heard a commotion outside and saw the officer beating a cowering Manuel. They opened the door and the two fell into the apartment and the officer continued to beat on Manuel until he stood up and then shot Manuel while he laid on the floor.

The embattled police department, already being investigated by the FBI over the jail death and the raid against the mayor, has asked the Latino community for calm while they promise to investigate this latest high profile case of allege police brutality. However, the other two incidents were quickly put down as officers doing their jobs correctly, despite the FBI being called in to investigate these color of law abuses. So residents are rightly skeptical that a fair and unbiased investigation will be conducted by their scandal-ridden police department.

I'm sure we'll be hearing more from Prince Georges County soon, sadly enough.

Seattle Police Brass Excusing More Misconduct

An interesting trend appears to be developing at the Seattle Police Department's "Office of Professional Accountability" (SPD OPA), which is the civilian oversight mechanism for police misconduct investigations. Not only are complaints taking longer to investigate, but it appears as though fewer complaints are making it to the actual investigation process itself. Instead, more complaints than ever appear to be getting dismissed out-of-hand by SPD brass.

We took a look at the current and past OPA statistics and noticed this trend pretty quick because the change in data was startling. First, here's a graph showing the OPA findings from the past few years.

OPA Findings From 2005-2008

Of course, the SPD OPA categorizes how it handles and finds complaints in a number of somewhat confusing ways, as you can see above, but ultimately there are two different ways it goes about establishing a finding and two different basic findings it can come up with: The OPA can investigate the complaint or defer to a supervising officer's discretionary finding and the OPA can either find the complaint as being valid or invalid.

Now, first, let's look at the resulting findings of complaints over the same time period:

Simplified OPA Findings From 2005 to 2008

As you can see, the general trend in findings over the first few years was fairly static, ranging around 30% sustained, until 2007 and 2008 where the trend plummeted to only 11% of complaints being found sustained (of those a vast majority being managerial complaints like incorrectly reporting hours for example). So, why are complaints being dismissed far more often?

Well, while many people have so little trust in the OPA complaint system that they now bypass it and go straight to a lawyer in cases of serious misconduct, yet there may be another factor in play as well... It may have something to do with this:

OPA Investigation vs Administrative Discretionary Findings 2005-2008

As you can see, there has been a very drastic shift in the ratio of complaints that are actually investigated by the OPA and the number of complaints that are simply dismissed by administrative officers like Lieutenants and Captains as "administratively unfounded" or "administratively exonerated" without investigation. Previously, a vast majority of complaints, around 90%, were handled by the OPA with very few being discretionary, but strikingly the trend upended with complaints being deferred to the discretion of the brass in nearly 60% of cases so far this year and only 40% being investigated by the OPA.

Interestingly enough, this trend seems to have started when the OPA Director was replaced near the middle of last year and the entire OPA office was reshuffled. This was also around the time that the civilian oversight portion of the OPA system, the OPA Review Board, made a scathing report that alleged interference in investigations by the police chief and questioned the trustworthiness of the entire OPA process. The outgoing OPA director also expressed concerns about the future of the oversight system but her replacement has been a steadfast defender of the police department.

As a result of the accusations made by the OPA Review Board the entire board has also been replaced this year, with their last report on the status of the OPA system being kept secret because it was reportedly a scathing review that would have left the city open to litigation by the Seattle Police Officer's Guild. It is appearing more and more likely that the city and police department are responding to problems with the oversight and disciplinary system by making it less effective and more secretive than ever and staffing it with members who will keep quiet about problems with the process.

Needless to say, the results of all the changes to the oversight system are clear, whether they are intentional or not. More and more often, complaints are being dismissed without review or oversight and this appears to have a direct correlation with both the changes in management for the civilian oversight system in Seattle and the news coverage last year of failures within the oversight process.

While the city has made pains to publicize the changes to the system that help ensure officers found to have committed acts of misconduct are disciplined, it's becoming clear that the system has been altered to find fewer officers guilty of misconduct in order to bypass those new rules. Sadly, this means that the OPA system of civilian oversight in Seattle is looking more like a PR front that covers up cases of misconduct for the city's embattled and scandal ridden police department than a properly working and transparent civilian oversight system designed to clean up the police department. The end result will be even more distrust between civilians and the police as misconduct and brutality rates continue to climb due to a lack of consequences for misconduct.

Note: Since the 2008 statistics are only based on mid-year reporting statistics, all previous year statistics were taken from the same mid-year reporting time-frame for that year for accurate comparisons.

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 

Off-Duty Seattle Police Officer Involved In Sturgis Biker Shooting -Updated

An off-duty Seattle police officer and member of the "Iron Pigs" motorcycle club, a biker group comprised of law enforcement officer and firefighters, is being investigated after being detained as a result of a shooting in Sturgis South Dakota this weekend. The Seattle Police Department has put this unnamed officer and 4 other officers who were with him on administrative duty while Sturgis police and other local authorities investigate the shooting that left one "Hells Angels" motorcycle club member hospitalized.

The shooting occurred around 1:00am inside a bar called the Loud American Roadhouse that held about 500 patrons at the time of the shooting. Accounts differ as to how many shots were fired, from 2 to 8, but the officer involved alleges that the shots were fired in self defense after a fight broke out between members of the Iron Pigs and Hells Angels, according to the Seattle Police Officer's Guild. Some witnesses who have given testimony to a grand jury convened in South Dakota and others in various motorcycle forums who claim to have been there suggest that the fight broke out over Iron Pigs MC members displaying their "colors" which is something most biker groups are discouraged from doing while at the Sturgis rally as it is seen as a provocation.

The unnamed officer involved reportedly has a history of disciplinary actions against him, including one 2005 incident at a Seattle Seahawks game where he taunted Seahawks fans which instigated a fight while he was working as security and another 2005 incident where he allegedly threatened to shoot a bar manager in Tacoma Washington while off-duty after the bar manager asked him to leave. Investigations into both matters found the officer guilty of misconduct, but the disciplinary actions merely resulted in a 2 day suspension for the first incident and a written reprimand for the threats he made in the Tacoma area bar.

The police guild has issued statements of support and insists that the officer was attacked without provocation. They state that they anticipate that he will be vindicated when video evidence taken from the bar becomes available. However, investigators have said the video is currently too dark to make out any details and they hope to have it enhanced by the time the grand jury reconvenes around August 27, so the assurances of the officer's innocence by Seattle Police Guild members is not based on any actual evidence or known independent witness testimony.

Alleged witness accounts reported in the press up to this point appear to contradict the officer's accounting of events to the media with the officer stating that he was being kicked and hit by several people and fired out of fear for his own life but witness acocunts seem to be indicating that the officer who fired shots was standing and shot at a single person who was fighting with someone else or else there was more than one Iron Pigs MC member who was armed inside the bar that night.

Irregardless of the nature of the shooting the officer may face legal consequences for having a concealed weapon inside an establishment that serves alcohol while he was drinking, which is illegal in South Dakota, as is carrying a weapon while intoxicated in that state. While off-duty officers are allowed to carry their service weapons even across state lines, they must still abide by the laws of the localities they visit in regard to their carry laws, especially in regards to being under the influence while carrying. Witnesses say the officer was taken into custody in the bar, where the shooting also took place, and the officer has admitted in a recent Seattle Times article that he had been drinking but insists he was not drunk. He was reportedly administered a BAC test but no results have been released.

(To highlight how rules about concealed weapons apply to officers, a recent politically motivated nightclub sting operation in Seattle, dubbed "operation sobering thought", resulted in the arrest of some nightclub employees because they allowed known undercover officers into bars with their service weapons.)

The Seattle Police Department has sent a contingent of officers to Sturgis to oversee the investigation while authorities remained quiet about details of the investigation and information surrounding the identity of officers involved and the wounded individual until recently. Sturgis authorities have stated that the officer has been released after questioning by a grand jury that had been hastily convened over the incident, but there is no indication currently whether any charges will be filed.

Meanwhile, the Iron Pigs MC websites have been going down all over the US leaving many to suspect that the bike club members are trying to clean up the questionable content and images that were posted on their sites in response to the increased scrutiny caused by this incident and to avoid giving the appearance of being instigators to the grand jury that is currently investigating the shooting due to the usage of terminology and imagery common to "outlaw" bike clubs like the Hells Angels and others.

A number of civil suits were filed recently over another off-duty police officer shooting incident in Seattle's Post Alley where a different officer allegedly hit a woman with his motorcycle, shoved her into a wall, and then shot a local defense attorney when people in the late-night bar crowd had allegedly attacked him over the incident. It's unknown as to whether that officer was a member of the Iron Pigs group and if that officer was among the five officers involved in the Sturgis shooting. However, the description of the misconduct complaints allegedly filed against the officer who supposedly fired the shots in the Sturgis incident do not match the Post Alley officer's misconduct record.

Sources:
The Rapid City Journal
The Seattle Post Intelligencer

UPDATED 08/11/08 16:16- added information on a somewhat unrelated shooting incident involving an off-duty officer on a motorcycle per commenter request.
UPDATED 08/12/08 01:32- added more information as it became available in news reports and for information about the grand jury hearings held in Meade County, South Dakota.
UPDATED 08/15/08 23:33- More information from recent Seattle Times article and various sites and fixed the link to the correct "Operation Sobering Thought" article.
UPDATED 08/18/08 14:11- Added details about and sourced witness accounts reported in the Meade County press.

Note: While we were aware of the officer's identity we did not publish that information out of respect for concerns expressed in the media for the officer's safety until the officer's identity was released in the Seattle Times on Aug 15. 

The officer in question, Lt. Ron Smith, has corresponded with this site on a number of occasions in the past both as a representative of the Seattle Police Officer's Guild and on his own to express his opinions on some of our stories, so when the media described the past cases of misconduct that were found against him prior to releasing his name we realized who he was.

A Tapestry Of Police Abuse Tales

Some sad and frightening stories of police brutality and misconduct from across the nation to thread together this week... While not all from the same place, they still weave the same pattern...

Let's start with the terrifying tale of Mr. Andre Thomas:

...She saw Andre Thomas standing with the prongs of the Taser still attached to him when four officers forced him to the ground and handcuffed him. "I saw them shove him to the ground, and they handcuffed him... They killed that man. They killed him. They killed him," she added, her hands trembling.

The woman said she saw one officer stomp on Mr. Thomas's upper back, holding his foot there while the subject lay on the sidewalk with his head hanging over the curb. Another officer "reared back and punched him in the head with all his might," she said.

Mr. Thomas vomited. Then, for several minutes, he lay motionless before an ambulance was called. The rescue truck stayed on the scene for several minutes more before Mr. Thomas was taken away...

...declared dead shortly thereafter.

-paraphrased from Simple Justice

, JonathanTurley, and The Post Gazette

Residents say Andre was scared, knocking on doors trying to find help and yelling that he was afraid someone was going to shoot him... Sadly the very people who were supposed to come and help him appear to have beat him to death instead.

While it's encouraging that citizens there have started protests over the killing, which is more than what they do here in Seattle and means there is a bit of hope for pressure on public officials to investigate. Unfortunately the department is investigating itself, which rarely ever ends well.

Sadly, this frightened woman's story of a man who was handcuffed and then had his life taken from him by a cowardly blow may very well change once police get a hold of her because they take a dim view on people who stand up and tell the truth or expose misconduct, like they did to this man and his family...

...he witnessed deputies beating a man in front of the restaurant/bar he owns. “They beat the shit out of him,” he said. “The guy’s lawyer came back and took witness statements. When the statements made it back to the sheriff’s department, they came by and asked me why I was getting involved.”

Not long after that, deputies started staking out his business, Jammers Rocking Road House, “They were wolf-packing my customers,” he said. “They would lie and wait for them to leave and then pull them over to see if they had been drinking.” Conover struck back by suing them and won an undisclosed settlement.

But the story didn't stop there...

On the night of his arrest, Conover and his family spotted a group of customers who had just left the bar. A Johnson County Sheriff’s deputy, who was parked along side of the road, pulled over the car with the customers.

“The lady who was driving doesn’t drink,” he said. “Her husband, who does drink, was sitting in the passenger’s seat.” So Conover pulled up to the scene and stopped his Hummer in front of the traffic stop. He asked his son for his IPhone, then rolled the window down and said:

“Hey fellas, I’m just getting your picture.”

Then he snapped the photo. Deputy McCloud - who has been on the force only 18 months - told him that photographing him was illegal.

Conver asked, "what planet are you from?”

McCloud started threatening to arrest him if he did not delete the photo, which as it turned out, did not even capture the deputy. The deputy then ordered Conover out of his car. Conver threw the phone back to my daughter and told her to keep taking photos.

McCloud placed two sets of handcuffs on Conover as Conover’s daughter snapped two photos before McCloud threatened her with arrest. “He started trying to get in my Hummer and get to the back seat where my kids were. I told him, ‘You better not go back there or else we’re going to have some real problems’,” he said.

McCloud then decided against arresting the daughter.

Later at the jail, Conover asked McCloud if had ever heard of the First Amendment. “He then turned to me and said, ‘I’m charging you with disorderly conduct’.”

Thirty minutes later, after McCloud had left the jail - and had time to think of what other charges he could come up with - he called the jailer and added another charge against Conover; pointing a laser at an officer. The problem is, the IPhone does not even emit a laser.

Conver's case is currently pending...

- Paraphrased from MagicCityMania via The Agitator

Making up false charges for an arrest in order to cover up for misconduct and to get a hold of the photographic evidence that proves it is nothing new, but lately it's been taking on a disturbingly brazen tone as officers don't even seem to be concerned about doing it right in front of multiple cameras...


-video linked by an anonymous poster who encourages us to bring cameras to the next Seattle Critical Mass ride.

Of course, for some reason even video evidence of misconduct fails to bring about any changes or discipline... so we wonder what would happen if a prominent political figure became the victim of police misconduct?

Mayor Cheye Calvo got home from work, saw a package addressed to his wife on the front porch and brought it inside, putting it on a table. Suddenly, police with guns drawn kicked in the door and stormed in, shooting to death the couple's two dogs and seizing the unopened package.

The mayor, who was changing his clothes when police burst in, also complained that he was handcuffed in his boxer shorts for about two hours along with his mother-in-law in the same room where his dogs lay dead on the floor in a pool of their blood. He said the officers didn't believe him when he told them he was the mayor. "They didn't believe me when I told them I was the mayor, they told a detective I was crazy."

"Our dogs were our children," said the 37-year-old Calvo. "They were the reason we bought this house because it had a big yard for them to run in." Calvo insisted the couple's two black Labradors were gentle creatures and said police apparently killed them "for sport," gunning down one of them as it was running away.

Well, we'll wait to see what happens, but the FBI is currently conducting an investigation that, well, would never have occurred so quickly if it were one of our own homes. Still, it's not something that should happen to anyone, being innocent and dragged though something like this, I definitely feel sorry for the family and hope they see justice done and can change things for the better.

The crime these two committed? Seems they were the unwitting victims of a scheme to ship pot to random addresses and have deliverymen in place to intercept them. County sheriff's officers say they didn't investigate the family enough to know the man was the mayor, but did know the layout of the house and that they had dogs.

Sadly, the police were reluctant to clear the mayor and his wife until today, when the police chief finally called the family... but not to apologize for how officers gunned down their dogs as soon as they entered. The sheriff says he's angry that the feds are investigating his officers now, he doesn't think it's fair that his department is being investigated, guess he doesn't like being in the other person's shoes now.

So... what do these kinds of events do to the public's trust in their government, in their system of laws and the people whom they entrusted to enforce them? The mayor's wife gives us a hint...

His wife spoke through tears as she described an encounter with a girl who used to see the couple walking their dogs.

"She gave me a big hug and she said, `If the police shot your dogs dead and did this to you, how can I trust them?'" Tomsic said. "I don't want people to feel like that. I just want them to be proud of our police and proud to live in Prince George's County."

We all want to feel that way, but sadly we cannot... and we cannot lie to the children to trust those people that we, unfortunately, have been shown that we can no longer trust. There are too many stories like this for us to accept that it's "just one bad apple" anymore.

It's a systemic problem, and the more ubiquitous cameras with wireless capabilities become the more we will see images of abuse, and things will likely grow worse before they get better as police unions and other law enforcement organizations continue to gain more political clout while officers find new ways to stop people from filming them and discredit those who would dare to testify against them.

...more on that later.

Man Shocked 12 Times By SPD Files Suit

Jury selection began Tuesday for the civil rights lawsuit filed by Michael Watson against several Seattle Police officers over an arrest that occurred during the February 2005 Mardi Gras in Seattle’s Pioneer Square.

The incident arose over allegations of theft made by a reportedly aggressive street vendor against Watson, who was accused of stealing a $5.oo string of beads. Officers claim that they overheard the dispute and when they warned Watson to pay the vendor he became belligerent and punched an officer in the chest. Officers then claim they were forced to wrestle him to the ground and arrest him for theft, resisting arrest, and assaulting an officer.

However, Watson claims that he was struck from behind by one of the officers after he used an obscenity in reaction to being accused of theft which caused him to fall into the officer he was accused of striking and then he claims officers needlessly used a stun gun on him over a dozen times during the arrest and suffered a ruptured disc, bruised ribs, and a shoulder injury caused by the officers.

While police officers, one of which an alleged expert in the use of Tasers, claim that they didn’t use their stun guns on Watson nearly as many times as was suggested, medical reports taken from Watson’s visit to Harborview Medical Center a day after he was arrested and posted bail record at least 12 individual burn marks on his torso and back. According to records, the charges against Watson were later dismissed in Seattle Municipal Court.

Allegations of excessive use of force being tied to counter-accusations of assault on an officer are fairly common, and sometimes contentious as the use of an assault on an officer charge along with obstruction and resisting arrest have long been termed as “the trinity” by police officers and as “cover charges” by defense attorneys and civil rights lawyers. Several recent cases in Seattle highlight the problems with accusations of assault on an officer, some of which resulted in losses by the city of Seattle in federal court.

Hayes & Lujan Case: Officers claim that Hayes tackled an officer who was arresting Lujan over a jaywalking incident but witnesses talking to journalists after the event made no claims to that effect. Hayes was ultimately found guilty of assaulting an officer anyway.

Bradford Case: Bradford ultimately won a wrongful arrest and use of force case against the city of Seattle even after an officer who reviewed the arresting officer's report tried to change it to indicate that Bradford had hit the officer, when the arresting officer even admitted he hadn't.

DV-One Case: A local DJ was arrested and convicted of assaulting an officer when he was trying to find out why officers were arresting and throwing his daughter against a cruiser for jaywalking. The DJ and some witnesses claimed he didn't hit the officer when he was beaten by several officers, but he was still convicted of assaulting an officer.

Nix Case: Nix, in his 70s at the time, was brutally beaten and later ended up hospitalized after he nearly bled to death in jail from the injuries he sustained in the beating which included a ruptured spleen. Officers insist that the arthritic old man, of whom friends say had great difficulty walking, had "surprised them with his speed and strength" when he allegedly assaulted them. Nix and other witnesses claimed the officers never identified themselves before they started pummeling him in an alleyway during an alleged drug bust.

In each of these cases of use of force the charges of Assault on an Officer came under questionable circumstances or the charges were outright disproved and highlighted serious problems with officers embellishing reports without consequence. Certainly, though, with the large number of publicly visible cases of alleged assaults on officers, there must be an epidemic of violence against the police, which they often cite as being the reason for aggressive tactics against civilians during arrests.

A review of records supplied by the Seattle Police Department seem to indicate otherwise, in fact showing a remarkable downward trend in the number of assaults against officers and the level of violence alleged during those supposed assaults, as the following graph shows… police work is the safest that it’s been in years:
chart shows incidents of assault on an officer, injuries from incidences, and excessive use of force complaints

However, as can be seen, the number of excessive use of force complaints filed don't correlate to the number of reported incidences of assault on an officer... while incidences of assault against officers have drastically declined over the years, excessive use of force by officers has risen somewhat in comparison, showing that officer aggressiveness is not tied to any reduction or increase in incidences of assault against officers.

It should be noted that there has been a downward trend in citizen reporting of abuses as trust in the oversight system has eroded and reports have indicated that complaints are used to prepare defenses against lawsuits instead of disciplining problematic officers, as exhibited in both the Bradford case and this case where the people alleging abuse did not report it to the police due to mistrust or the advice of their lawyers, so the use of force trending is likely off. Irregardless, it's clear that working as a police officer in Seattle is safer than ever, thus the steadiness of use of force complaints remains baffling.

So, the city finds itself in the midsts of another excessive force lawsuit where problematic claims of assault on an officer as justification for excessive force have been called into question. If Seattle's private law firm hired on a no-bid contract to defend police officers against civil rights litigation lose this battle, it will be the seventh civil rights abuse case lost or settled by the city in the last 12 months. The case against the city on behalf of Mr. Watson is being handled by Seattle civil rights attorney John Kannin of Kannin Law and no details yet on start dates or expected duration.