Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Bad Cops & Prosecutors Blogs -> Injustice in Seattle

Bad Cops & Prosecutors

: Injustice in Seattle

Slow Weekend

By David Packman

Sorry for the dearth posting this weekend, pretty busy these last few days with work and family.

I've been working on a post about perceptions of police brutality and how a lax departmental policy on use of force reinforces the us vs them mentality between police officers and civilians as well as some examples of when civilian witnesses reported unreasonable use of force while officers and the department insisted the use of force was fine according to their policies.

It was sort of inspired by the claims of unnecessary escalation of force in the recent arrest of an SCCC student were witnesses claimed police overreacted and used force too quickly as well as the SPD OPA Auditor's notes of a case where a man was stunned into unconsciousness with a taser shot to the head by SPD officers and then repeatedly punched in the face right afterward "just to get his attention".

I'll examine why officers are always exonerated in such cases and others while normal citizens would see such incidents as being obvious cases of brutality. Then we'll examine why departmental policies will allow this to continue eroding public trust in the police department as more cases of brutality make their way onto videos shown all over the world.

As usual, if there are any suggestions or stories you would like to see, just let us know!

Full post as published by Injustice in Seattle on June 01, 2008 (boomark / email).