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Misconduct Links Update

By David Packman

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.

The reasons for this should be clear, since the OPA process and Seattle's police chief have repeatedly and consistently shown that they are utterly unable to hold officers accountable for misconduct it can only be concluded that reporting instances of misconduct through the SPD's own system of accountability can do nothing positive for abused citizens or the general public.

Additionally, if the process does not help citizens or the public by holding abusive officers accountable, it can then only serve to give the Seattle Police Department 's interensts by giving them the ability to prepare for any anticipated legal actions against them by providing them early warning of potential lawsuits and more time to prepare for cases.

So, since the process is incapable of providing beneficial results to the persons who have been abused by Seattle police officers or protect the community at large... we cannot condone the use of this process as a recourse for those harmed by abusive officers or act as a witness to their abuses.

Therefore, we highly recommend that victims of police brutality DO NOT use the OPA as a police misconduct reporting mechanism.

This site will remove links to the OPA reporting mechanism in the "Reporting Misconduct" link section and post direct links to alternative reporting mechanisms for your use for the time being, including:

• The US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division

• The division of the FBI that handles "Color of Law" abuses

• A list of lawyers dedicated to police misconduct cases

• A list of local media contacts

Again, we cannot stress this enough, DO NOT REPORT POLICE ABUSES TO THE OPA until the city and the guild can at least implement the recommended reforms proposed by the accountability review panels.

Stay safe.

Full post as published by Injustice in Seattle on February 05, 2008 (boomark / email).