Bad Cops & Prosecutors
Injustice in Seattle 
Devoted to increasing public awareness of police misconduct and detainee abuse nationwide.
Post Frequency: 3.3/day Last Entry: May 22, 2009 at 16:48:00 Recent Entries: 445
By David Packman
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NOTE: Site Closed
Posted on May 22, 2009This site will be closed down at midnight PST tonight and will no longer be publicly accessible.Please feel free to visit our new effort at www.InjusticeEverywhere.comThank you for visiting.
Why I Moved Away From Seattle-Focused Coverage
Posted on May 20, 2009I read an article from the Seattle Weekly this morning that was so incredibly frustrating that it solidified why I shouldn't cover Seattle issues anymore...These people have no idea that this site exists, none... makes me wonder what kind of research they did into this piece, because if they did they would have found that I speak to exactly the same issues they brought up...
Injustice In Seattle Is Everywhere
Posted on May 19, 2009The new site, InjusticeEverywhere, is now operational.While I still have some work to do on the site, for all intents and purposes it will be where I primarily post new content from here on out. It may have had a bumpy start, as all new sites do, but thanks to the hard work of my great new hosts, FSBlogs...
Via Email Tip - LAPD Officer Pleads Guilty to Off-Duty Assault
Posted on May 18, 2009This just in via an e-mail from a reader... Press release from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office. Posting it here since the new site is still in transition and I have something to link to for the news feed... LAPD Officer pleads to assault while off-duty LOS ANGELES ? A 39-year-old LAPD officer pleaded guilty today to assault with a semiautomatic firearm stemming from a 2008 off-duty encounter with restaurant patrons at the Redondo Beach pier, the District Attorney?s office announced...
Site News - InjusticeEverywhere.com is Down
Posted on May 18, 2009If you haven't noticed, the new site www.InjusticeEverywhere.com is currently down back online er, keeps going in and out of service...after a 3 hour outage... My host provider is currently looking into it, last successful visit to the site was at 8:00am PST from a county government network in Wisconsin...
New Site Help
Posted on May 15, 2009I'm hoping to have the new site up sometime this weekend.But, in the meantime, I'm opening up the floor for suggestions/help with certain things.1. Resource links - I still want to supply links for victims of police misconduct to, possibly, find help...
Plans for the new site
Posted on May 14, 2009I just wanted to give people a quick summary of what I have in mind for the new nationally-focused site after I close this site down... and, of course, I welcome any other suggestions, opinions, comments, and any help I can get! Stories: Provide in-depth analysis of police misconduct stories in the news that offers a viewpoint that doesn?t fall for the bias from police department spokespersons, police union representatives, and police beat reporters who develop biased relationships with and work with cops day-in and day-out...
Twitter News Feed Change
Posted on May 14, 2009Just a quick note to anyone using the Police Misconduct News Feed on Twitter, especially those who are using the RSS feed on their sites. I will be switching over from the Injust_Seattle Twitter address to a new InjusticeNews address overnight tonight, probably starting around midnight...
Almost Getting There
Posted on May 13, 2009Ok, so it looks like the name is settled and I might have a line on a host that'll take the site... So now I need to figure out where to register the domain (and no, I will not give GoDaddy any business after they gave the Seattle police the InjusticeInSeattle...
New Site Name Status
Posted on May 12, 2009As the previous post mentioned, this site is going away... I'm shifting focus to national coverage and will not be covering Seattle area issues anymore. So, it's time to change over to a new site with a new look and new name. That's where you come in...
Latest Seattle City Police Accountability Reports Declare Success, But Reveal Failures
Posted on May 11, 2009I've been focusing more and more on national issues of police misconduct lately... maybe all the failures in Seattle are part of the reason why... for example: The Seattle Police Department's Office of Professional Accountability (the collective name for the department's internal investigations unit and the civilian police oversight system in Seattle) has actually been busy for once...
Site News - Changing Scope
Posted on May 11, 2009Based on the feedback I've received about the site, and based on the lack of support locally here in Seattle for nearly two years, I'm planning on ditching the "Injustice In Seattle" site and transferring to a new site. The support I've been getting nationally for the news feed project has really shown me that this is the direction I should be going instead of wasting time trying to fix things here in Seattle...
Site Donation Policy
Posted on May 09, 2009As you may or may not notice, I've added a Donation button to the right of the page. I really didn't want to and held out on doing this for quite a while... but, to be honest, this effort has taken up a lot more of my time and resources lately...
Police Misconduct NewsFeed Update - First Week of May
Posted on May 09, 2009Last month the National Police Misconduct News Feed captured 495 reported cases of police misconduct which averaged out to 16.5 cases per day, or 1 case every 87 minutes.Those cases of police misconduct allegations involved 531 officers and 49 police chiefs...
Cops Everywhere... They Lurves Us 2
Posted on May 08, 2009It appears as though the fine officers with the NYPD have their own message board where they apparently like to rant about this and that... such as sites like Photography is not a Crime as well as yours truly... (I wonder if they've seen Blue Must Be True? He keeps asking where I get all my hate-mail from...
National Police Misconduct News Feed Criteria
Posted on May 06, 2009Since there have been a few questions and concerns going back and forth about what stories should and should not go into the National Police Misconduct News Feed I decided that it might be a good time to go over the criteria I've developed for picking stories that qualify and then open it up to comments, questions, and suggestions...
Police Misconduct - Widespread or Deep-seated?
Posted on May 05, 2009While the National Police Misconduct NewsFeed project has just begun to give us a glimpse at the possible breadth of America's police misconduct problem, it sometimes fails to show just how deep it runs perhaps.Sure, when most people think of police departments where corruption and misconduct run deep, we think of big cities like Chicago, Oakland, New York, or Philadelphia...
The Politics of Truth
Posted on May 04, 2009In 2007, several incidents of police misconduct, including allegations that officers who lied were never punished, brought public outrage to a head in Seattle and prompted city officials to create 2 review boards to look into the Seattle Police Department's policies and methods of dealing with allegations of misconduct and disciplinary actions against officers...
Well That Was A Dud
Posted on May 02, 2009Site stats for the last month to give you an idea of just how stagnant this site has become. Hmm, two months of effort getting the news feed process right, hours upon hours scanning and entering reports of misconduct each day into Twitter and a database, a full 24 hours of effort analyzing the data and preparing the results to see how extensive police misconduct might be...
National Police Misconduct Reporting Project - April 2009 Statistics
Posted on May 01, 2009With March clearly being a test run for the National Police Misconduct News Feed, April should be considered as our first month at this effort to gather information on all reported instances and alleged instances of police misconduct in the US.Now that all of the reports in April have been recorded, I've distilled the data and the results are as follows:General Statistics495 - Reported instances and alleged instances of police misconduct...
A Map of Police Misconduct
Posted on April 30, 2009View 2009 April Police Misconduct Reports in a larger mapI'm thinking of creating an interactive map of police misconduct cases in the US each month, but it's a gigantic pain in the butt and will take a lot of my time... (Time is something which I barely have already between the working 2 jobs, taking care of family, this site, and the news feed...
From The Twitter Files - The Oddball Cops of April
Posted on April 28, 2009As the end of April draws near I'm getting ready to compile the statistics from the first month of the national police misconduct tracking project. In case you didn't know, that project, of which the National Police Misconduct News Feed on Twitter is but a by-product, is an attempt to gather statistics on the extent and types of police misconduct in the US, as well as localities where misconduct may be more prevalent than others...
Seattle's Civilian Police Oversight System Gets New Auditor
Posted on April 25, 2009On April 10th, the Seattle Police Department's civilian oversight system auditor's contract expired. That auditor, Katrina Pflaumer, was the first auditor for our current system, called the Office of Professional Accountability, or OPA, and appeared to do a pretty good job at being auditor from what little we can tell through the very secretive system we have in place...
Reader Poll: What Type of Police Misconduct Will Be Most Reported This Month?
Posted on April 23, 2009There's a new poll up. I wanted to see what readers thought would be the most common police misconduct problem for this, the first month, of our national police misconduct tracking project.But, before you vote, some explanation...First, the options listed are among the top ten most reported types of police misconduct so far this month, so you already have a 1 in 10 chance of getting it right...
Personal Question For The Lawyers Out There
Posted on April 21, 2009Never mind, I figured it out... Thanks!
To Speak Ill Of The Dead Says Something Of The Living
Posted on April 20, 2009As I progress through the police misconduct tracking project and review each day?s stories of police misconduct, one of the many things I think about as I enter each dismal story of police misconduct that occurs across the US into Twitter and into my tracking database is; ?which one of these stories might grow legs and go national this time?? It?s a difficult thing to figure out, after all, since each story is deserving of equally broad attention to me...
Once a High-Valued IT Professional, Now Homeless and In Search of Justice
Posted on April 19, 2009The following article is based on a reader's email and was published with his permission. Early in 2005, James E Simmons III flew into Seattle to work as a consultant. With several years-worth of experience in information technology security and regulatory compliance, his skills were highly valued, sometimes bringing in over $90 an hour on each contract gig...
From the E-Mail Bag
Posted on April 16, 2009I received this last night from the local chapter of the October 22nd Coalition. Apparently they, along with the Tacoma chapter of the National Action Network and Revolution Books, are holding a meeting at Uptown Espresso in Belltown at 4pm on Saturday about the Malika Calhoun incident...
Site Note
Posted on April 16, 2009Sorry for the light posting lately, I've not been feeling well... hopefully things will be back up to speed shortly. Thanks for sticking with us!
Some Days I Get Grief From Both Sides
Posted on April 14, 2009I received a rather angry email from an, apparently, new reader the other day? I won?t reveal the whole message since I didn?t get permission to publish the person?s story? but it ended on this note: ?Either way [assuming that you are NOT the police running a fake website], we're fucked...
Injustice In Seattle Twitter Project Update
Posted on April 12, 2009Thought I would give everyone a quick update on the Twitter NewsFeed project. If you didn't know, I'm using Twitter as a means to aggregate all news stories about police misconduct in order to have a handy reference to compile statistics on just how much police misconduct occurs in the US, where it occurs most often, and what types of police misconduct are most prevalent...
Important Notice For Law Enforcement Officers Visiting This Site
Posted on April 11, 2009Log entry for visit from King County Government's network last night. He started writing his comment at 1:02am and his commentary in response to this story about King County deputy Paul Schene was finished at 1:33am. Last night we were honored by a visit from one of King County's finest who spent over a half hour of taxpayer's time posting a comment critical of how I cover police misconduct but don't bend over backwards to praise officers for doing what they are paid, handsomely, to do...
Reader Request: Show Support For Community Leader at Court Hearing Today
Posted on April 10, 2009This story came to my attention last night via Twitter @juliechang206 concerning the case of Wyking Allah who was essentially arrested for trespassing in the NW African American Heritage Museum that he helped found and worked with. His arrest appeared to be, from what I recall reading at the time, more of an effort to keep him from saying what he wanted to say about some disconcerting "anti-gang" legislation in the works at the time during the opening ceremonies for the museum and cultural center than a question of his trespassing on property that he worked to create...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 04-10-09 - Local Edition
Posted on April 10, 2009Comment we received last year from a Chicago cop.Before I get to the news...Last month I made a plea asking people to post and talk about the raid Phoenix PD performed on a blogger who posted information about police misconduct down in Phoenix AZ in order to shut him down...
About the 2008 Annual Report From the Seattle Police OPA
Posted on April 09, 2009The Seattle Police Department Office of Professional Accountability (SPD OPA, which is Seattle's version of an internal affairs department) released their annual report recently. Most of it is the same old - same old... but there were some interesting tidbits hidden within it's convoluted depths...
Is Reporting Police Misconduct Career Suicide?
Posted on April 08, 2009On December 23, 2008, King County Sheriff?s Deputy Brian Bonnar was acquitted of federal deprivation of civil rights charges that were filed against him on allegations that he had used excessive and unnecessary force when he arrested 41 year old Irene Damon...
Who Do You Call On A Cop?
Posted on April 06, 2009Police culture's "Blue Wall of Silence" -The most effective no-snitching campaign in history. One question that I've asked myself over and over again ever since I became a victim of police misconduct is what will I do when it happens again? More specifically, would I do anything differently while it was happening to me again...
About that Twitter
Posted on April 04, 2009I got a few questions about my decision in the previous post to stop using Twitter as a news feeder for stories about police misconduct and why I changed my mind and started the feed back up. Well, I decided to stop using it because my original intent for it was to show just how many reports there were of police misconduct each day in the US and give people interested in police misconduct a handy way to get information on those stories...
A Month of Police Misconduct in the News
Posted on April 03, 2009If you haven't noticed, I started using Twitter (here) as a sort of extension for this site, a sort of "headline news feed" of sorts. Specifically, I use it to post any news articles that I come across that are related to police misconduct or detainee abuse...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 04-01-09
Posted on April 01, 2009There's a lot of interesting stories going on, so I thought I'd post an assortment of items today with no real theme. Attorney Paul Richmond's Take on "Drug Czar" Kerlikowske Attorney Paul Richmond is a civil rights attorney working in the Olympic Peninsula area who, among other things, has done a lot of work in the area of protester rights cases as well as teaching courses on how to film the police during protests...
A Request To Support Community Based Media
Posted on March 31, 2009With the recent demise of a major Seattle news outlet and reports of similar incidents in cities across the US, it's disconcerting that our sources for information about what happens around us are being consolidated and reduced to television-friendly soundbites that are filtered as to not offend advertisers or the editorial bias empowered by limited competition in local markets...
Against Police Misconduct, Divided We Will Fall
Posted on March 29, 2009I wanted to take some time and explain some things to readers who may wonder about my previous article. I realize that, at first glance, it might have sounded pretty defeatist.So, let me start by saying that I didn't write it to suggest that people fighting police misconduct should give up, quite the opposite...
Why Seattle Police Misconduct Cannot Be Fixed In Seattle
Posted on March 28, 2009What I'm about to tell you might be hard to swallow, but it is entirely truth. The problem of police misconduct in Seattle, and most cities in fact, cannot be solved at a local level alone. Specifically, no matter how much pressure you put on local politicians and officials...
Where Norm Stamper Gets It Wrong
Posted on March 27, 2009Image of Norm Stamper, retired Seattle Police Department Chief of Police Normally, I respect and agree with most of what ex-Seattle Police Chief, and current member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), Norm Stamper has to say about the issue of police misconduct and brutality...
Why Do Police Victimize The Victim?
Posted on March 26, 2009This story comes in from the Dallas Morning News in Dallas Texas today, but as you'll see, it's definitely something not limited to Texas... something similar may have happened in Seattle recently too. ---------- At midnight on March 17, Ryan Moats received a call from the hospital...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch - Catching Up Local Edition
Posted on March 25, 2009Hey folks, sorry it's been a while since I posted anything substantive, been busy at work and just now caught a break to give you some updates and newer news... Speaking of news, catch us on Twitter and get all the latest police misconduct news stories as we see them...
From the E-Mailbag
Posted on March 24, 2009Well, folks... sorry about not having time to put anything new up. At least any new posts since I have been throwing twitter newsflash pieces out there. Still hard at work but I figured I had time to share a nice piece of mail I received yesterday with everyone...
Follow That Twit!
Posted on March 17, 2009As you may have noticed, I've decided to see if Twitter can enhance the site and so far it seems to be somewhat useful. It allows me to send out brief updates on articles I notice during the day or let people interested in the site know what I might be working on without having to throw out a whole post about it...
Interim Police Chief Candidate May Have Trouble With Seattle's Police Union
Posted on March 16, 2009Seattle Deputy Police Chief John Diaz News has just been leaked late last night that Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has picked Seattle Deputy Police Chief John Diaz as the temporary replacement for Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske who has been picked by President Obama to be the next drug Czar...
Is Seattle Now A One Newspaper Town?
Posted on March 16, 2009The Seattle Post Intelligencer's site redirected to this page for a few hours this evening.Speculation as to when, not if, one of Seattle's two major newspapers would stop printing has abounded ever since the paper's owner, Hearst, announced that they would be shutting the paper down if no buyer was found by mid-March...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 03-15-09
Posted on March 15, 2009President Obama's Bailout Plan Might Only Encourage More Police Corruption While much has been said elsewhere about how Obama's plan is giving $36 million to police departments across the US and how this influx of money could have done a lot of good if it was tied to reforms that addressed police accountability and prevented racial profiling...
Second King County Deputy Acquitted, Will Paul Schene Be The Third?
Posted on March 14, 2009Video from a SeaTac holding cell that led to charges being filed against King County Deputy Paul Schene of misdemeanor fourth degree assault on 15-year-old Malika Calhoun. Yesterday, a King County jury found King County Sheriff's Deputy Don Griffee not guilty of assault in the fourth degree for allegedly punching Johnny Bradford in the face while he was handcuffed in the back seat of a cruiser...
Readers Poll: Site Confidentiality Guidelines
Posted on March 13, 2009Currently, the confidentiality guidelines I've established for this site are that when I receive a report of police misconduct by an individual I treat it confidentially and will not repeat what I've been told to anyone unless that person gives me express permission to share the information he or she has sent and has stated whom I may or may not share that information with...
Did the King County Sheriff use this site to make a press release?
Posted on March 11, 2009Visits from the King County Government network on 03/10/09 It was a weird day yesterday... Now, I'm not sure about this so I'll leave it up to the readers, but it almost seemed like the King County Sheriff's Office used one of my posts and comments as a basis for a press release...
Rally Tomorrow Against King County Sheriffs Department
Posted on March 10, 2009I received the above press release via email last night, apparently around the same time anyone else did. I thought about not posting it, but decided that I'm obliged to... but with some caveats. First, let me be clear that I was not one of the supposed "other groups and activists" mentioned in this press release...
The Police Will Have Someone To Call... But What About The Rest Of Us?
Posted on March 09, 2009News today is that the "SafeCallNow" bill, a bill seeking to establish a taxpayer funded program for officers to confidentially get counseling for stress-related problems, has made it's way out of the Washington state senate on a unanimous vote...
You Will Never See Videos Of Police Brutality In A Seattle Holding Cell
Posted on March 09, 2009While many people all over the world are now familiar with the case of Malika Calhoun thanks to the video (at top) that showed a King County Sheriff's Deputy assaulting the 15-year-old girl in a holding cell, some people still mistakenly assume that this video came from a Seattle holding cell...
Why Threatening Bad Cops Makes No Sense
Posted on March 07, 2009Depiction of a group of vigilante "baldknobbers" from the 1919 movie "The Sheppard Of The Hills". Baldknobbers were groups of vigilantes in Arkansas and Missouri who were responsible not only for attacking horse thieves, but also murdering their critics and their families, as well as several racially motivated lynchings in the mid to late late 1800's and early 1900's...
Why Is It Different When Officers Threaten Us?
Posted on March 07, 2009Results of a poll I did last year. In my previous post I talked about why it would be wrong for people to make threats or take revenge on police officers who have been accused of wrongdoing since it would make that person no different than that police officer if someone did that...
Video Released Of King County Sheriff Beating 15 Year Old Female Detainee
Posted on February 27, 2009Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 02-25-09
Posted on February 25, 2009Just a brief note first, I apologize for the infrequent updates lately, I've been exceptionally busy and just haven't had any time to post new articles. There are several new stories in the works, hopefully I'll get a chance to post them soon! Trust me, I would rather be doing something that helps people like this than some of the other things I've had to deal with lately...
Patronage vs Misconduct - A Tale Of Two Cities Part 1
Posted on February 24, 2009The Vice of Injustice and Virtue of Justicefrescoes at the Arena Chapel in Padua by GiottoOn January 30th, The Dallas Morning News broke a story about how two of four Dallas Police officers fired on 1/29/09 had actually been fired at least one other time previously but were reinstated upon appeal...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 02-19-09
Posted on February 19, 2009Disturbing Video Evidence Shows Medical Examiner Misconduct In Mississippi Over at ReasonOnline, Radley Balko closes what we hope is the final chapter on corrupt Mississippi medical examiner Steven Hayne and his supposed bite mark expert Michael West...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 02-17-09
Posted on February 17, 2009Local News Seattle Officer In Charge Of Inauguration Delegation Arrested for DUI Before Trip to DC The Seattle Police officer in charge of the contingent of officers sent to Barack Obama's inauguration was allowed to represent Seattle even after he was arrested for driving while drunk...
First Annual State-Of-The-Site Survey
Posted on February 17, 2009This site has been operational for over a year now and I've been wondering lately whether it's been close to achieving some of what I had hoped it would achieve. This site is supposed to exist in order to help inform people about police misconduct and detainee abuse in order to: A...
Flowing From The Top - A Disturbing Trend Or More Of The Same
Posted on February 16, 2009While part of what I do here involves scanning various news outlets for stories of police misconduct and detainee abuse. As such, sometimes I notice certain trends.While it's true that the number of stories of police abuses by officers in general appears to be constantly rising, overwhelmingly so in fact, I noticed another more disturbing trend developing...
When An Advocate Turns Against A Victim Of Police Misconduct
Posted on February 14, 2009Whenever a case of mistreatment by police occurs it is, in its most simplistic form, a matter of vigilantism. That is, it's a matter of a police officer exceeding his role within the justice system and inflicting harm upon a citizen that he or she has presumed guilty and worthy of punishment...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 02-13-09 - Local Edition
Posted on February 13, 2009A lot of news going on in Seattle so instead of a regular News Watch I'm turning the focus local for this issue... even though I have a lot of catching up to do for some national stories I'm looking into. Arrested For Standing While Black Tim Harris at the always intriguing Apesmas Lament tells the tale of a Real Change newspaper vendor named Donald Morehead who was selling copies of the local advocacy weekly paper when a Seattle Police officer allegedly knocked one of his teeth out, slammed his head against a cruiser, and then arrested him...
Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske May Be New Drug Czar
Posted on February 11, 2009Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske is reportedly being considered for a cabinet-level position within the Obama administration, at least according to some unnamed sources. Those sources also hint that it appears as though Kerlikowske will be the next director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, or ?drug czar?...
Site News for 02-09-09
Posted on February 09, 2009First of all, sorry for the slowdown in posting. With the economic downturn seeming to be in full swing, employers are in the position to demand more from the people they keep... so it goes for me as well and I've been bogged down in project work. Hopefully I'll have time soon to post something worth posting...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 02-05-09
Posted on February 05, 2009As misconduct reports climb, more people than ever still trust cops. Before I get into today's news headlines, I just want to say that it's getting harder and harder to keep up with all the reports of police misconduct that are popping up all over the US and abroad...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 02-03-09
Posted on February 03, 2009Screenshot of fake site created by SPD officers to gather information on police misconduct victims.LOCAL NEWSSeattle Police Department's Spy Website Still ActiveThe fake "Injustice In Seattle" website (click at your own risk), created by some Seattle Police officers in an apparent attempt to trick victims of police misconduct into giving up their personal information, is still operational over a year since it first popped up in response to this site being created...
Video Analysis - Was Pirone Justified When He Punched Oscar Grant
Posted on February 02, 2009BART Police Officers Tony Pirone (left) and Johannes Mehserle (right)Tony Pirone, the BART police officer who has been accused of punching Oscar Grant in the head before he was shot in the back by Johannes Mehserle, has retained a lawyer and his lawyer has made a public statement suggesting that his client was justified when he struck Grant...
No Posts Today
Posted on February 01, 2009No posts today... My wife and I are celebrating our 15th year anniversary so I won't be posting anything today. Yes, I know, some big stories today, like Tony Pirone's lawyer claiming Pirone struck Grant so hard that his head snapped back and knees buckled because Grant allegedly tried to knee Pirone...
Visitors Of The Week
Posted on January 31, 2009Since Five Before Midnight seemed to like my Visitor of the Day post last week... well, maybe "like" isn't the right word... but since she thought it was interesting I decided to make a new one for this week.First... do you think anyone visited looking for info on how to donate to Oscar Grant's daughter's trust fund?Nope...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 01-31-09
Posted on January 31, 2009LOCAL NEWS Sometimes Public Defenders Are Guilty of Misconduct Too Felipe Vargas was arrested in November of 2003 under allegations that he molested a child. Three days later that child recanted... but Vargas would still spend over seven months in jail for a crime that never happened...
Oscar Grant Shooting Update - Mehserle Granted Bail and More
Posted on January 30, 2009BART Police Officers Tony Pirone (left) and Johannes Mehserle (right) As you may have already read, there's been some updates in the Oscar Grant shooting case. This will likely be the last I post about this case for a while, I think regular readers are a bit annoyed that I've devoted so many posts to this case, and I apologize for that...
New Poll - What Can I Do Better
Posted on January 29, 2009I put a new poll up, asking readers to let me know what I can do to better help the effort to reduce police misconduct and detainee abuse as well as improving police accountability and transparency.Lately, I don't think I've been doing a good job of it, not that anyone really can given the difficulty of convincing the public that police misconduct actually happens, let alone that it shouldn't be allowed...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 01-29-09
Posted on January 29, 2009Picture taken outside of the US Federal Courthouse in Seattle Washington First, A Confession... I've been busy... so busy in fact that the quality of the posts I've been putting up have really been lacking... for that, I apologize. I put them up without really reading over them for a final edit since I'm always rushed, and that doesn't do what I'm trying to do with this site any justice...
Slow Ahead
Posted on January 27, 2009This week is going to be a bit slow with posts, I apologize for that, but my headaches have been getting bad again and my (paying) jobs require more hours from me this week. Things will hopefully be back to normal soon, but in the meantime I have a question for you, the readers, to ponder for me until I have a chance to post again...
Oscar Grant Shooting Update - Other Officers Might Finally Be Investigated
Posted on January 25, 2009As I reported on 01/11/09, my analysis of the publicly available BART shooting videos clearly indicated that a second officer could be seen punching Grant in the head prior to the shooting... we published that analysis a full two weeks ago, and finally it seems as though others are reaching the same conclusion that I did, as KTVU reported yesterday...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 01-24-09
Posted on January 24, 2009Local News Initiative 100 Puts Seattle Jail Issue To A Vote Tim at Apesma's Lament reports that a group called "Citizens for Efficiency and Fairness in Public Safety" have filed an initiative to force the city of Seattle to allow the citizens of Seattle to vote on whether or not to build a new jail and to force the city to study the use of alternatives to incarceration in order to save money and reduce recidivism...
The Seattle PI - Bringing Us The Good News And The Bad
Posted on January 23, 2009It's been reported today that the Seattle Post Intelligencer won the 2009 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award in the series category from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York for their "Strong Arm Of The Law" series of reports that ran in January and February of 2008...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 01-22-09
Posted on January 22, 2009Seattle Police Department's "Command Vehicle", complete with telescoping boom mounted surveillance cameras, stationed outside of an Inauguration Day rally at Seattle's Westlake Center. Local Blogger Wonders If Seattle Is Becoming A Police State Apesma's Lament, a local Seattle blog by activist Tim Harris, wonders if Seattle may be turning into a police state given the overwhelming presence of Seattle Police at a local rally during Inauguration Day in which different independent reporters claimed it appeared as though there were more police than attendants at the rally organized by Seattle Community College students in Seattle's Westlake Center...
Building Bridges To Today
Posted on January 20, 2009I grew up in Ohio during the 1970s while neighborhoods were still somewhat segregated and some still showed scars from riots that occurred just a few years prior to my birth. Since my parents were separated I would spend time between them in some very separate worlds...
Visitor Of The Day
Posted on January 19, 2009As do most "bloggers", I use tracking services to monitor the site traffic and these services give me information about how people found the site, what they did while they were here, and other sundry details that help me figure out if the site is communicating its message well...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 01-18-09
Posted on January 18, 2009A Photograph of the Olympia Washington Anti-Police Brutality march on 01/17/09. Police Brutality Protesters Violently March Against Police Violence A small protest in Olympia, Washington yesterday against police brutality and the shooting death of Jose Ramirez-Jiminez last year took a violent turn after protesters were herded towards a police substation by Olympia police...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 01-16-09
Posted on January 16, 2009A review of police misconduct and jail abuse stories making the headlinesSite NewsThe first annual 2008 worst police misconduct video of the year reader's poll has ended, expect results from that poll to be posted later along with additional information about the stories behind those videos...
BART Officer Johannes Mehserle Arrested In Nevada
Posted on January 14, 2009An alleged image of BART officer Johannes Mehserle taken before the New Years shooting death of Oscar Grant from Carlos Miller's Photography Is Not A Crime blog where he analyzes whether Mehserle was really carrying a taser on his opposing hip like BART officials claim he was...
Johannes Mehserle Charged With Murdering Oscar Grant - But More Questions Remain
Posted on January 14, 2009Alameda Country District Attorney Tom Orloff announced that his office has charged Johannes Mehserle with murder in the shooting death of Oscar Grant on New Years Day. Orloff, according to the Press-Enterprise, went on to say that "At this point, what I feel the evidence indicates, is an unlawful killing done by an intentional act and from the evidence we have there's nothing that would mitigate that to something lower than a murder...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 01-13-09
Posted on January 13, 2009The "Worst Police Misconduct Video of 2008" reader's poll is ending tomorrow... Sure, they are all bad, but the worst ones will get their own story when voting ends. So pick which one you think exemplifies the worst example of police misconduct that was captured on video in 2008...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 01-12-09
Posted on January 12, 2009A review of police misconduct and jail abuse stories making the headlines Youth Manager In Juvi-Jail Accused Of Sexually Abusing a Minor A "youth manager" at the Marion County Juvenile Detention Center in Indiana is accused of forcing a 16 year old detainee into performing sexual acts for him on Christmas Eve...
When Assault Becomes Murder - An Analysis of the Oscar Grant Shooting
Posted on January 11, 2009The videotaped shooting death of Oscar Grant by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle has stirred angry demands for criminal charges from the public as BART officials and the Alameda County District Attorney have dragged their feet. Officials claim that they need more time to investigate what the public has already seen...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 01-09-09
Posted on January 09, 2009A review of police misconduct and jail abuse stories making the headlinesWhy Prosecuting Police Misconduct Is So Difficult In The USEarl Ofari Hutchinson, with the American Chronicle, offers a brutally honest and realistic look at why it is highly unlikely that the BART police officer who shot Oscar Grant in the back and killed him will ever be convicted, even if he's ever charged, for the killing...
The Oscar Grant Shooting - A Study Of America's Dualistic Justice Systems
Posted on January 08, 2009Video of the Oscar Grant shooting that we first covered here on 01/05/08 when the video was released to the public by witnesses. In the early hours of New Years Day 2009, 22 year old Oscar Grant pleaded with the officers who detained him by telling them he had a young daughter at home in the same way one might try to personalize oneself to a criminal in hopes that a connection will be made when being threatened with harm...
Worst Police Misconduct Video of 2008 Reader Poll
Posted on January 07, 2009So much happened in 2008 and it seems like we've been losing the battle against police misconduct because of all the stories we've seen...Or is it just that these stories have always been here and that we're just now hearing more about the stories that usually get covered up thanks to brave citizens out there who videotape the police when they misbehave and because that technology has become so ubiquitous? Do these show us how bad misconduct is, or how much misconduct out there happens without us ever knowing about it?So, let's take a look back at the stories of police misconduct in video that happened in 2008...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 01-05-09
Posted on January 05, 2009Cell phone video taken by witness to the BART shooting in Oakland, CA.BART Officers in Oakland California Shoot Man In Back While He Pleads For His Life22 year old Oscar Grant was fatally shot by BART officers in Oakland California while laying face down on the ground and begging officers for his life...
King County and US Department of Justice Reach Agreement on Jail Reforms
Posted on January 05, 2009King County Executive Ron Sims and the US DOJ released details on an agreement which outlines steps that King County must take in order to address the constitutional rights abuses the US DOJ discovered during it's year-long investigation last year into jail deaths and other abuses that occurred in the King County Correctional Facility (KCCF)...
When An Anti-War Protest Becomes A Pro-War Protest
Posted on January 04, 2009I heard there was going to be a protest march today against the war going on in Gaza so I decided to go and take a few pictures... The bulk of the protest march in Seattle, cited in the news as 2,000 but seemingly more like 200. It really did seem to be an anti-war protest, intermixed between the Palestinian flags were some of the stock protesters that seem to be at any given anti-war protest of any stripe...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 12-28-08
Posted on December 28, 2008A review of police misconduct and jail abuse stories making the headlines Washington State Democrat Pushes For DNA Testing Upon Arrest Democratic state representative Mark Miloscia is introducing a bill into the Washington state legislature that would allow police to collect a suspect's DNA upon arrest instead of at the time of conviction for a felony crime...
Researching Top 10 Worst Cities For Police Misconduct
Posted on December 26, 2008I'm currently working on a story that will list the 10 worst cities for police misconduct. It will be like a top ten list of cities you would never want to live in. At this moment, since most cities still don't record misconduct statistics in a reliable manner, we'll be judging cities by the number of publicly cited reports of misconduct via the media along with the number of federal investigations, other reports of widespread misconduct, and possibly taking into consideration the severity of misconduct reported and whether cities attempted to address it or cover it up...
For Your Holiday Viewing
Posted on December 25, 2008Alas, I'm old, but here's one of my favorites on my listening list all year round...The Kinks with Father Christmas.Happy Holidays everyone.
Happy Holidays
Posted on December 25, 2008I would like to wish everyone a happy holiday season. No matter what you believe, if you believe or celebrate anything or not, it's still nice to have a day or two out of the year where there is a bit more peace in the world and where we are a bit more like brothers and sisters to each other than usual...
US ER Doctors Reveal They Know Police Use Excessive Force
Posted on December 24, 2008A new report in the January 2009 edition of the Emergency Medicine Journal may contain evidence that the epidemic of police brutality in the US is very real. That report reveals that 99.8% of US Emergency Physicians believe that the police use excessive force when detaining suspects...
Police Officer Threatens Woman Who Blogs About Officer-Involved Domestic Violence
Posted on December 23, 2008A Screenshot of one threatening email messages sent to Officer-Involved Domestic Violence (OIDV)advocate at the Behind The Blue Wall blog. Harassing and sending threatening messages to police accountability activists and people who report on police misconduct is a favorite pastime for police officers...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 12-23-08
Posted on December 23, 2008Denver's "Independent Monitor" Refuses To Investigate Misconduct ClaimsDenver's police monitor refuses to investigate allegations of misconduct during the DNC simply because he felt that the police "had no reason to lie" about what happened. (Guess he got some of those t-shirts the officers made to celebrate mistreatment of protesters for free)...
One DOJ Report And One Inquest Later, Abuses Continue At The King County Jail
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No Good Deed Goes...Court Says Good Samaritans Can Be Sued
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Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 12-19-08
Posted on December 19, 2008div align="center"a href="http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/dec/02/restrained-inmate-punched-repeatedly/"img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188053894902569474" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_jN7PogF33lA/R_-rh6k_2gI/AAAAAAAAANo/NZJrhXZZC5k/s400/1202restrained_t220...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 12-18-08
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12 Year Old African American Girl Beaten And Arrested By Galveston Texas Police Who Mistook Her For A White Prostitute
Posted on December 18, 2008I know, I normally don't do this for stories outside of the Seattle area... But... Offered in it's entirety from the a href="http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2008/12/galveston_false_arrest.php"Houston Press blog/a via Radley Balko's a href="http://www...
More Raising Cain In Bainbridge Island
Posted on December 16, 2008It started with a 911 call made by Seth Chipman's wife, a registered nurse named Rickie Chipman, and ended with Seth in jail instead of a hospital. Seth was in a state of mental distress and had hurt himself so Rickie Chipman called 911 to have Seth transported to the hospital...
Excessive Force Complaint Sustained In Mark Hays Case
Posted on December 16, 2008The Seattle Police Department's Office of Professional Accountability's Civilian Auditor released her biannual report recently and in it was a revelation that I wasn't aware of. It appears as though the OPA, the SPD's internal investigations division, found that officers used excessive force when they arrested Mark Hays and Michael Lujan earlier this year...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 12-12-08
Posted on December 12, 2008In Local News: 9th Circuit Court Rules Seattle's Parade Permit Law Unconstitutional The court of appeals ruled that Seattle's permit laws violate the constitution's first ammendment since it vests the Seattle Police chief with full authority to decide whether people may use public property to broadcast their message...
Vindictive Vancouver - Punishing Good Cops For Telling The Truth
Posted on December 10, 2008In 2006, the city of Vancouver Washington fired an officer that they described as the dirtiest cop in Clark County?s history for allegedly falsifying reports and they sent out Brady notifications which effectively ended his career in law enforcement...
Construction Zone
Posted on December 09, 2008Yes... I'm in the process of changing the site design, so don't be alarmed if you're a frequent visitor and things look different.Thanks for visiting, and hopefully the changes are for the better... and, as always, constructive suggestions are welcome!
All Around The Blogs... And Some News Too
Posted on December 08, 2008I'm mixing things up a bit for this edition of NewsWatch. There's been a lot going on that I wanted to cover, much of it already being covered in other blogs, so here we go. ...First we'll start out locally as always: Is King County Executive Ron Sims' Head In The Clouds? The Seattle Weekly asks if King County Executive Ron Sims already has his head somewhere other than in his own troubled county as rumors abound about him being offered a position in Obama's administration...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch For 12-06-08
Posted on December 06, 2008Picture taken outside of the US Federal Courthouse in Seattle Washington In Local News: Seattle Officer Remained In SPD With Outstanding Warrant For Two Years In October of 2005 Seattle officer Francis Estrada became so inebriated that he drove the wrong way on the I-5 freeway and crashed into a number of different vehicles on is way home...
Are Cops Gathering Info On Misconduct Victims?
Posted on December 04, 2008Screenshot of the fraudulent Injustice In Seattle site presumably created by Seattle police officers to gather information on victims of police misconduct. Some of our readers may remember when, early this year, some Seattle police officers created a fake Injustice In Seattle site to fool people searching for this site into revealing their personal information to Seattle police officers instead...
Winter Cleaning
Posted on December 03, 2008I'm getting ready to update my blogroll and our blog feed due to the large number of police misconduct blogs that disappeared this year. So, if you know of a blog we've missed, or a related police misconduct or civil rights site, or even a civil rights lawyer that we neglected to add to our list that you think we should include in our lists, please let me know! Might as well clean up all those links while I'm at it, huh? Thanks for reading!
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 12-02-08
Posted on December 03, 2008In Local News:Remember This The Next Time An Officer Tries To Blame The VictimA Bellingham Washington police officer's police cruiser was apparently stolen when he left it running in an alleyway while responding to a call. The police car was later recovered...
Strangers In Strange Lands
Posted on December 02, 2008A friend of ours had just come back into town yesterday from his tour of duty in Iraq so I took him out for some dinner in a quiet little restaurant so we could catch up for a bit. Of course, there were a lot of stories about what he had seen and experienced there, but there was also talk of how it was difficult to adjust to being away from all of that...
From The Mailbag - WTO 9th Anniversary
Posted on December 01, 2008Clips from a video by Paul Richmond of the WTO protest showing an officer pull a protester's head up by the hair and then pepper-spraying him at point-blank range in the face. Received an email yesterday from attorney Paul Richmond reminding me that it, yesterday, was the ninth anniversary of the WTO protests in Seattle...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 11-28-08
Posted on November 29, 2008Judge Clears Way For Wrongful Death Suit Against Sandy Oregon PoliceYou may have read recently about a Sandy Oregon police officer who was indicted for giving drivers licenses he confiscated to his teen-aged female friends? Well, a judge gave a go-ahead for a lawsuit against that department for a shooting death of an unarmed man, Fouad Kaady, who had been in a car accident which involved that very same officer back in 2005...
Sharing Thankfulness
Posted on November 27, 2008Despite all that I?ve been through I have a lot to be thankful for and perhaps because of all I?ve been through I tend to be more mindful of those things I am thankful for than I would otherwise be. I am thankful for the simple things, the seemingly small things that most take for granted maybe, simply because many of those things were taken from me or nearly lost...
Adding Insult To Injury
Posted on November 25, 2008As some of you might remember, back in February of this year I broke down and finally went to a doctor after the problems I had ever since I was badly beaten and then denied medical care in November of 2006 just wouldn?t go away and was really affecting my work...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 11-23-08
Posted on November 24, 2008Recruiting Video Stirs Controversy For Misconduct-Plagued Police DepartmentThe San Jose Police Department is being taken to task over it's recruiting video that highlights militaristic police tactics due to recent concerns over that department's record of aggressive tactics, brutality, and racial profiling...
Detainee Abuses Continue A Year After DOJ Investigation
Posted on November 24, 2008This month marked two anniversaries that, unfortunately, remind me of things that I would rather forget and that happen to be oddly coincidental. First, in November of last year the US Department of Justice released the findings of an investigation they performed into the treatment of detainees at the King County Jail (KCCF) that found, what they termed as, egregious and potentially deadly civil rights violations occurring at that facility which included the denial of medical care, physical abuse, and sexual abuse against detainees...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 11-21-08 - Updated
Posted on November 21, 2008Seattle's Infamous Aurora Bridge, home to the Fremont Troll and the most suicide attempts in the city UPDATED: 17:50- 11/21/08 SPD Officer Investigated For Handling Of Aurora Bridge Suicide A Seattle Police Department officer is under investigation over a suicide death...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 11-19-08
Posted on November 19, 2008Picture taken outside of the US Federal Courthouse in Seattle Washington Border Patrol Chief Insists They Have More Authority Than God More news about those US Border Patrol roadblocks I posted about the other day that appear to be violating 4th amendment rights against illegal search and seizure in Washington State...
Technical Difficulties
Posted on November 17, 2008It appears as though the www.injusticeinseattle.org placeholder site is having some issues. While the blog itself is viewable, some links will not work, such as the HOME link to the right and the media contacts list since they are hosted at the .org domain instead of the blogger domain...
Remaining Charges Dropped in Sturgis Shooting Case
Posted on November 17, 2008As predicted, the remaining weapons charges against two Seattle Police Department officers involved in a shooting during the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota have been dropped. Per The Seattle Times, the judge in the case determined that the federal law allowing officers to carry weapons anywhere while off-duty took precedence over state law outlawing weapons in establishments that serve alcohol...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 11-17-08
Posted on November 17, 2008Is the King County NAACP Still Relevant? Here in Seattle, the Seattle Post Intelligencer questioned the relevancy of the King County chapter of the NAACP in Seattle the other day... They seem to have come to the same conclusion I did, that they could be if they would just learn to communicate with the community better and actually work more with other groups to address common problems...
US Border Patrol- More Authority Than God On Earth?
Posted on November 16, 2008A couple days ago I commented on the US Border Patrol's "internal checkpoints" that have been set up all over Washington state to not only catch suspected illegal immigrants but also allow agents to search US citizens as well. Since the end of February the US Border Patrol has operated 53 roadblocks in distances up to 100 miles AWAY from the border...
On The Web And In Seattle
Posted on November 14, 2008California Blogger Stalked Over Article About Officer's Sexual Assault ChargesFive Before Midnight, a blogger in Riverside California who covers the inner-workings of the local government and police conduct issues, seems to be the target of a creepy stalker because of the in-depth coverage written about the Riverside officer who is facing trial over multiple charges of sexual abuse...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 11-12-08
Posted on November 12, 2008Yet More Police Misconduct In The NewsIn Local News: Ron Sims Just Says No To Civil Rights Again The latest contract negotiated and agreed upon between the King County Deputy Sheriff's union and the infamous King County Executive Ron (I hate civil rights) Sims is getting the cold shoulder from the county council who say they may nix the deal because the contract doesn't contain the civilian oversight components they feel are needed...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 11-10-08
Posted on November 10, 2008Officers fired for misconduct merely enter a revolving door to another police department elsewhere.In Local News:Everett Washington police shoot homeowner while responding to alleged burglaryQuestions over a Everett police shooting in response to an alleged home invasion first surfaced after friends of the person shot have come forward claiming that he was one of the homeowners and was not sufficiently warned by police before he was shot...
Are Bullies And Bad Cops Wired For Aggression?
Posted on November 09, 2008fMRI images of brain activity found in teenagers diagnosed with aggressive conduct disorder when they were shown videos of people being injured. While most of our brains are wired to feel empathy when we witness suffering, it appears as though the same might not be true for bullies...
About That Election (and other stuff)
Posted on November 08, 2008Seattle celebrates Obama's election on Nov. 4, 2008. Photo courtesy of The Stranger Flicker Pool First, I want to apologize for not posting over the last few days, I took Tuesday off to deal with some family health issues and to make sure I also had the chance to go vote...
NewsWatch Halloween 2008 Edition
Posted on October 31, 2008In Local News:Son Of... Peaches?47 year old James Gilligan of Lake Stevens Washington has been sentenced to 4 years of prison and judge Ellen Fair is proposing to cordon off sections of the county as "James Gilligan-free zones"...Gilligan's crime? He stole a child's backpack at a bus stop and a young girl's backpack off of a school bus after his pet poodle, Peaches, told him that the kids were transporting drugs on the bus...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 10-30-08
Posted on October 30, 2008Newlywed and father-to-be shot dead by police in his own front yard in this sad story from CNN VideoThat NYPD Sodomy Story Gets SeriousAt first even I was suspicious of this story, but it appears to have enough merit to prompt the District Attorney in Brooklyn New York to take the charges that NYPD officers sodomized a suspect with a police radio antenna to a grand jury...
October In Seattle
Posted on October 28, 2008Sorry I've been out of commission for a few days, there's a bunch to catch up on locally so let's get started... Latest OPA Reports Jonah, over at The Stranger's blog, posted about some of the rare sustained findings that he found in the September Seattle Police Department Office Of Professional Accountability (SPD OPA) report, including one that found a dispatcher had sex with a 16 year old runaway after supplying him with alcohol...
Out Sick
Posted on October 24, 2008Sorry folks, haven't been feeling well these last few days. There are a few stories I'm working on, so hopefully I can get to them this weekend. My apologies.
Police Misconduct NewsWatch For 10-22-08
Posted on October 22, 2008Today is October 22: The 13th Annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police BrutalityWear black today in support of police brutality victims. For a list of events near you, click the link above.Chicago's Torture Squad Leader Finally ArrestedThe infamous Jon Burge of Chicago PD's torture squad of Area 2 who has long been accused of being responsible for the torture of up to 122 people in efforts to coerce false confessions by electrocution and other means, has finally been arrested 26 long years after he had first been accused of such horrendous crimes...
Seattle Police Union May Be Skirting Campaign Finance Laws
Posted on October 20, 2008Police unions have a very unique position in American politics due to the combination of power they can wield as a collective bargaining organization, as a privileged class of citizens imbued with the power to enforce the law, and as a powerful political force that can make or break an election with influential endorsements...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 10-17-08
Posted on October 17, 2008A Shirt Printed and Sold By A Denver Police Union To Celebrate How They Handled Protesters At The DNCWill Denver Police Print Shirts To Celebrate This Too?A Denver Colorado Police officer accused of beating handcuffed teen until he broke his ribs, lacerated his spleen, liver, and kidneys may have cost the city nearly $900,000 in a lawsuit settlement over the incident...
City Pays For Cop To Sue Civilians
Posted on October 16, 2008In early July we reported on the case of Zsolt Dornay and how he is using tax payer funds to sue a man that he shot, along with four others who were involved in allegedly attacking him while he was off-duty, and in plain clothes, after he had allegedly hit a woman with his motorcycle and then threw her against a wall when his bike had been tipped over in 2006...
Misconduct NewsWatch for 10-14-08
Posted on October 14, 2008Police Misconduct In The News Feds To Investigate City Of Vancouver Residents and the mayor of Vancouver Washington request an investigation by the US DOJ into allegations that the city manager, city officials, and several police officers violated the law when they used racially-charged intimidation and abuses to punish Navin Sharma for testifying against other officers during a police misconduct investigation...
A Year In Review Part 1
Posted on October 13, 2008A look back at a year's worth of misconduct and detainee abuses For the anniversary of Injustice In Seattle I thought it would be interesting to look back at some of the stories that we've published to see if there has been any progress in the fight against police misconduct and detainee abuse since this site had started and how some of the stories that we've published have turned out since we last published them...
The Problem With The Palin Troopergate
Posted on October 10, 2008UPDATED: 7:08pm 10/10/08I doubt there are many readers of this site who are not familiar with the ethics investigation into allegations that people within Alaska governor Sarah Palin's administration put undue pressure on public safety commissioner Walt Monegan to fire Palin's ex-brother in law over allegations of police misconduct that started during a contentious divorce between Alaska State Patrol Trooper Mike Wooten and Palin's sister...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 10-09-08
Posted on October 09, 2008Yet More Stories Of Police Misconduct In The NewsIn Denver Colorado, again...Denver Colorado police sued for staying true to those brutality-glorifying shirts they've been selling. Denver police face a million dollar brutality suit by a graphic artist who had to receive stitches and suffered permanent nerve damage after he was assaulted by police in the street but was never formally charged with any crimes...
Something Wrong With This Picture?
Posted on October 08, 2008Article about accusations of racial profiling appearing in The Seattle Medium(click for larger version)I suppose you could call this the most bizarrely misplaced police recruiting ad of the year?(BTW, we reported on the racial profiling story last month...
Site News
Posted on October 06, 2008Injustice In Seattle has hit a couple milestones this month... but might have to cut back soon...First, October marks the first anniversary of this site and I would really like to thank all the people who made that possible... Mainly that would be you, the readers and supporters who have spread the word about the site in places I never would have thought that we would be talked about...
Miscondcut NewsWatch for 10-06-08
Posted on October 06, 2008Police Misconduct In The News Police Accused Of Setting Man's Home On Fire For Filing Complaint In Kampar Malaysia a man has been assaulted, threatened, and had part of his home burned down for filing charges of police brutality on behalf of his young son who was allegedly slapped, choked, threatened, and almost had melted plastic poured over his genitals in an effort by police there to make him confess to supposedly stealing his teacher's purse...
NewsWatch for 10-03-08
Posted on October 03, 2008Police Misconduct In The NewsHoly Cow!A MOOrestown NJ patrolman and his girlfriend face 45 charges of sexual assault for molesting at least three underage girls and four counts of animal cruelty for sexually assaulting... cows.Interracial Couple Claims Brutality Was Racially MotivatedAn interracial couple in Montgomery WV claim officers there used derogatory language when they were beaten and arrested for a traffic violation and that, while handcuffed at jail, one officer reacted violently to the couple kissing each other by stating "We're not having any of this shit here" and then he rubbed chemical irritants into the husband's face, eyes, and mouth...
When A Thin Blue Line Hits The Blue Wall of Silence
Posted on October 02, 2008Numerous sites, including this one, ran the story about how a Denver police officer?s union printed up thousands of shirts meant to commemorate the role of police officers during the Democratic National Convention which depicted a thuggish-looking police officer slapping a truncheon in the palm of his hand while standing menacingly over the city with the caption ?We get up early to beat the crowd?...
Racism Rising In Seattle
Posted on September 30, 2008James Bible, head of the Seattle-King County chapter of the NAACP, complains of racial profiling by Seattle Police in an interview with KING5 News. My mother was an immigrant from a small Greek island who blessed me with bronze-colored skin and a rare blood disorder similar to sickle-cell that is only found in Mediterranean people...
Was October 22nd, 2007 The Last National Protest Against Police Brutality?
Posted on September 29, 2008For a while now we've been tracking the demise of several police accountability activist sites and organizations and the trend appears to be fairly far-reaching and, as of yet, unexplained. The trend appeared to have culminated in the sudden shutdown of the long-lasting and very outspoken BadCopNews...
Police Misconduct Newswatch for 09-27-08
Posted on September 27, 2008Recent Stories Of Police Misconduct In The NewsFallout From Riders Rides OnThe Oakland California police department may be failing To implement court-ordered reforms stemming from the infamous Oakland Riders scandal, possibly spurring a continuation of state oversight...
Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 09-23-08
Posted on September 22, 2008Abbreviated Edition The Tale Of Elliot Hughes; Beaten And Tortured In St. Louis "?me and some friends were chanting for food,? when six or seven officers came into the cell. ?One punched me in the face, and I fell unconscious. An officer slammed my head on the ground, waking me up...
Light Posting
Posted on September 19, 2008Sorry for the light posting this week, been busy working two jobs and now I'm faced with yet another medical dilemma. Our 19 month old son has some sort of infection; what started out at first as a small pimple on his arm has erupted into a half dollar sized rash that we first thought was an allergic reaction to something...
Who Will Watch The Watchmen Now
Posted on September 18, 2008When three ex-Seattle police officers formed VIEVU with the idea to develop a small wearable camera for police officers that would help reduce the number of false misconduct accusations against police officers and provide them with a useful tool to gather evidence while on the job, it's unlikely that they imagined that the most resistance to their idea would come from their peers and old coworkers at the Seattle Police Department...
Sturgis Shooting Update: Charges Dropped Against Ron Smith
Posted on September 16, 2008Prosecutors in Meade County South Dakota announced today that they have dropped the last remaining felony charge against Detective Ron Smith, the Seattle police officer who shot a member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club in a crowded Sturgis bar in early August...
News Recap for 09-15-08
Posted on September 15, 2008A new feature that examines misconduct in the news Sturgis Shooting Update The Sturgis Shooting case has had a few new developments in the last couple of weeks. Joseph Patrick McGuire, the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club member who was shot by an off-duty Seattle police officer, is set to appear on Sept...
A Weekly Misconduct Roundup
Posted on September 12, 2008I'm contemplating making this a regular feature, rounding up the news of the week both in Seattle and elsewhere, so let me know what you think. (poll has been added above)Lots of Misconduct In The Year's BestFirst, I've been really busy for the last few weeks, if you couldn't tell, so I missed it when One World Report on KBCS 91...
Navin Sharma - A Good Cop Who Can't Be A Cop Wins Settlement
Posted on September 10, 2008Navin Sharma was, by all indications, a good and dedicated police officer with the Vancouver Washington police department. Navin's efforts with the department to develop the Tactical Emergency Medical Support (TEMS-SWAT) Unit was instrumental in saving the lives of numerous fellow officers and citizens alike and his efforts to lead charity drives and events were inspirational...
A New Wall Of Silence Around The SPD
Posted on September 09, 2008The Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) is the internal investigations branch of the Seattle Police Department that is responsible for investigating allegations of misconduct. Part of the role within that department is community relations in order to build trust within the community for the police department and trust in the internal investigative process itself...
St. Paul, A City Unfettered
Posted on September 05, 2008The last image recorded on AP photojournalist Matthew Rourke's camera before he was shoved from behind and arrested without warning, as documented here. The total arrests for this week's Republican National Convention appears to be around 820, at least 28 of those arrested were journalists and several more were legal observers and medical professionals who attempted to aid injured protesters...
Losing The Battle Against Police Misconduct
Posted on September 04, 2008Photo of Kentucky University journalism student, with press badge, being doused with chemical spray. Note that it's clear he, the only one in range with a camera, is being intentionally targeted by the officer. The photo was taken by Matthew Rourke of the Associated Press, who was also arrested shortly after taking this photograph...
Reporting On Police Activities Is Under Fire
Posted on September 02, 2008interview with Amy Goodman about her arrest "...I was put into a cell, which I later measured to be about nine by eleven paces. And I was in there with seventeen other?seventeen protesters who had been also arrested that day. Some of them were still soaked with, you know, pepper spray, and their skin was burning, and they were asking for a nurse...
This Week In The News
Posted on August 30, 2008There have been several interesting stories in the news over the last couple days, so let's take a look...Media Feels The Wrath of Police Miconduct?Let's look outside of Seattle for a second first....With the seemingly unlawful arrest of an ABC news reporter and producer in Denver Colorado at a hotel near the Democratic Party's National Convention this week we certainly thought that maybe the media would be a bit more sensitive about complaints of police misconduct and unlawful activities that could have political motivation, such as what occured in Seattle at the Seattle Police Officer's Guild during a Republican candidate for governor's public press conference just a week before the arrest of Asa Eslocker in Denver...
Did Police Ransack Police Brutality Activist's Home?
Posted on August 30, 2008An interview with Michelle Gross of Communities Against Police Brutality Among the numerous reports of several politically motivated raids taking place over the weekend in Minnesota to preemptively disrupt groups planning on protesting the Republican National Convention was this story of an anti-police brutality activist who's documents were ransacked back at her home while she was detained elsewhere in one of the questionable raids...
Blue Must Be True
Posted on August 29, 2008"If self-policing worked, then society would not need the police would we? Law enforcement agencies (as miniature societies) are no different - they cannot police themselves." -Karl Mansoor Who is Karl Mansoor? Mr. Mansoor is an ex-police officer and a current law enforcement instructor in Virginia...
Seattle Police Officer Indicted On Multiple Charges In Sturgis Shooting
Posted on August 28, 2008Originally posted on 08/28/08 at 08:58, updated 08/28/08 at 17:27Multiple charges have been filed today against Seattle police officer and Iron Pigs Motorcycle Club member Detective Ron Smith upon the recommendation of a Meade County grand jury over the August 9th shooting incident where Detective Smith, who was off-duty in attendance at the Sturgis motorcycle rally, had shot a Hells Angels Motorcycle Club member twice inside of a crowded Sturgis bar...
How Dangerous Is Police Work? (and other police misconduct statistics)
Posted on August 27, 2008I received an email today asking, as many do, whether there are any hard statistics on police related violence and color of law abuses. Unfortunately, as I have to tell many people, there aren't any easy ways to get this kind of information for a number of reasons...
Sturgis Shooting Update
Posted on August 27, 2008A Meade County, SD grand jury reconvened today in order to determine whether or not any charges would be filed over the shooting that occurred in a Sturgis, South Dakota bar last week by an off-duty Seattle police officer who was attending the annual Sturgis motorcycle rally as a member of the Iron Pigs Motorcycle club...
Monkey See...
Posted on August 26, 2008Visitors By City For The Last 30 Days The blogger over at Apesma's Lament, a really great local blog I try to make a daily habit of visiting, put up a map of his visitors for the month as a show of his obsessiveness with his blog stats... I share his pain...
Tim Burgess Wages War On... Social Disorder?
Posted on August 25, 2008Seattle city councilmember Tim Burgess has recently released his plan to combat "social disorder" within Seattle. While admitting that crime rates in the city are the lowest that they have been in several decades, he has come up with a new way to justify a call for more aggressive police tactics and additional hires for the most expensive police force within the state...
From The E-Mailbag
Posted on August 24, 2008I received this message last night from an anonymous reader in regards to the Sturgis shooting story that's been in the press lately and I thought I would share it with my readers to see what they thought about it... "Sir, you should check your facts before printing things on your blog if you want legitimacy...
About The Seattle Public Safety Civil Service Commission
Posted on August 20, 2008The 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...
A Tapestry Of Abuses Redux
Posted on August 19, 2008I haven't posted for a while on purpose as I wanted to leave the last post about how Seattle Police misconduct complaints are bypassing the OPA process and being dismissed without oversight or investigation by SPD brass at top for as long as I could...
Seattle Police Brass Excusing More Misconduct
Posted on August 14, 2008An interesting trend appears to be developing at the Seattle Police Department's "Office of Professional Accountability", or SPD OPA for short. Not only are complaints taking longer to investigate, but it appears as though fewer complaints are actually making it to the actual investigation process itself...
Seattle Media Intimidated Into Silence?
Posted on August 12, 2008An 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...
Off-Duty Seattle Police Officer Involved In Sturgis Biker Shooting
Posted on August 11, 2008An 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...
A Tapestry Of Police Abuse Tales
Posted on August 09, 2008Some 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:...
Man Shocked 12 Times By SPD Files Suit
Posted on August 07, 2008Jury 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...
Around The Net Again
Posted on August 07, 2008Some interesting stories, some of which I'll write more on later... but for now:?I don?t have to show my papers on demand; I don?t live in that kind of world? says Olympia attorney Legrand Jones about his fight against charges of obstruction for not showing his identification when Tacoma Washington police officers demanded it...
Out Sick
Posted on August 06, 2008Sorry I haven't been posting much lately, haven't been feeling well.There's plenty to catch up on so I'll be back at it as soon as I can....and thank you for sticking around!
For Nigel
Posted on August 05, 2008Hold those you love close to you and treat all the moments you share with them as if they are fleeting and only momentary... I say this only because they are.For Nigel, you are dearly loved and dearly missed.
The News Around The Net
Posted on August 01, 2008Here's some of the news items going around the interwebs for this week:Washington Criminal Defense linked over here in an interesting post about a new rating site. Remember RateMyCop? Well, seems like there's a new rate your judge site up. Somehow I get the feeling that isn't going to end so well...
The Governer Was Carded... So What?
Posted on July 30, 2008The big news making the rounds today is about Washington state's Governor Christine Gregoire being turned away from an Olympia bar because she didn't have her ID with her when she, her compliment of political friends, and police escort went to have a few after an event...
Allegations Of King County Jail Abuses Continue
Posted on July 28, 2008The King County Jail, located in downtown Seattle Washington, serves as a detention center for both pretrial detainees and convicted felons in the greater Seattle and King County area. In November of last year a Department of Justice investigation into that facility found, what it termed, egregious and deadly constitutional rights violations that directly caused the death of at least one detainee, if not more...
Undue Process
Posted on July 27, 2008There were a few articles I was going to write over the last few days, but I've not been doing well lately... my headaches have been bad lately and one spot on my side has really been hurting where that gang of neonazis broke my ribs when they attacked me...
Seattle Loses Police Misconduct Lawsuit Appeal
Posted on July 24, 2008Jonah at The Stranger reports that a federal judge has denied the city of Seattle's appeal in the Bradford v. City of Seattle case which found in favor of Bradford who was wrongfully arrested and hit by an SPD officer in 2006.A jury awarded the Boys and Girls Club volunteer $268,000 in the case and the city of Seattle appealed...
Oregon Judge Rules Cops Are Not Above The Law
Posted on July 24, 2008Attorney Eric Bryant presents testimony at hearing over his citizen's citation issued against police officer -photo attributed to The Portland Mercury A Portland Oregon judge has ruled that Portland police officer Chadd Stensgaard must pay a $35 fine for illegally parking his police cruiser in a no parking zone when he went to get sushi during his break and was issued a citation from a citizen for it...
Seattle Police Arrest Superman
Posted on July 23, 2008file this one under random Seattle weirdnessKING 5 News is reporting that the Seattle Police have detained a man wearing a Superman costume today on an unspecified outstanding warrant after he allegedly made threats to abduct a baby near a cafe on 3rd and Pike...
New Police Blog Praises Old Jail Accreditation
Posted on July 23, 2008The Seattle Post Intelligencer's new (and pretty biased) police blog recently praised the King County Correctional Facility (aka KCCF or King County Jail) for obtaining a National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCHCC) accreditation for detainee medical care...
Ah, Birthdays
Posted on July 20, 2008I wasn't going to post about it, but it's my 38th birthday today.How did I start it out so far? Well, found out a friend was stabbed the night before during a mugging and refused to go to the hospital because he didn't want to be hassled by the police and he doesn't like doctors...
Seattle Vigilantism Turns Deadly
Posted on July 16, 2008Depiction of a group of vigilante "baldknobbers" from the 1919 movie "The Sheppard Of The Hills".Baldknobbers were groups of vigilantes in Arkansas and Missouri who were responsible not only for attacking horse thieves, but also murdering their critics and their families, as well as several racially motivated lynchings in the mid to late late 1800's and early 1900's...
How Many Lawsuits, Seattle?
Posted on July 15, 2008The Seattle Times reported yesterday, (and that report has since been parroted nonstop elsewhere), that the city of Seattle has lost or settled three police misconduct lawsuits in the last year when they reported on the most recent settled lawsuit that involved a young lady who had to have reconstructive surgery after her encounter with the Seattle police in 2006...
Thank You
Posted on July 14, 2008It's been yet another busy weekend for me and Monday is looking pretty full as well, so I apologize for the light posting again. Since I don't have much time for a full story now, I just wanted to make a quick post about thanks...First I want to mention the people who write to tell us their own stories of police misconduct or detainee abuse...
Seattle Public Safety Committee Meeting Tomorrow
Posted on July 14, 2008I just became aware of this a short while ago, so please pardon the short notice. The Seattle City Council's Public Safety, Human Services, and Education Committee is set to discuss some police accountability changes tomorrow (Tuesday, 07/15/08) during their meeting at 2:00pm on the 2nd floor of City Hall in downtown Seattle...
Seattle Settles Yet Another Excessive Force Suit
Posted on July 14, 2008According to KING 5 News today, the city of Seattle has agreed to pay Brittany Beaulieu $100,000 in a settlement over an excessive force lawsuit filed by her attorney, Allen Ressler, over an incident that occurred in April, 2006. The case was covered earlier this year in the Seattle Post Intelligencer's "Strong Arm Of The Law" series on Seattle police officers who were never disciplined despite findings of excessive force on the part of the police department's internal investigations unit, the "Office of Professional Accountability" (OPA)...
Some Advice For Those Looking For Justice
Posted on July 11, 2008The Vice of Injustice and Virtue of Justicefrescoes at the Arena Chapel in Padua by GiottoEver since I started this site I've received letters from people who have had their rights violated or have been through similar or worse abuse than I was put through...
Miscellaneous News
Posted on July 10, 2008Just some random news items for you so far today...Seattle Police OversightThe Stranger has gotten a hold of the proposed candidate list for the Office of Police Accountability Review Board members. (The OPARB is the public-facing portion of Seattle's civilian oversight system)...
Answering An Injustice With Injustice
Posted on July 08, 2008I'll be the first to admit, despite learning first hand that no good deed goes unpunished, that I don't like seeing bad things happen to people and I am usually the first to intervene in order to stop something I think is wrong. This problematic behavior on my part isn't limited to what happened a bit over a year ago, it goes back quite some ways and even continues today...
The Frustration Of Missed Opportunities For Change
Posted on July 08, 2008I got a really disturbing report today that I'm working on about a frustrating and utterly appalling case of yet more brutal detainee abuse in the King County Jail . It's occurring at the same damn time that the Department of Justice is still wrangling with the King County government over the deadly constitutional violations it found when it investigated that jail...
SPD Officer Shoots Unarmed Attorney Three Times And Then Sues Him
Posted on July 05, 2008In June of 2006, an off-duty undercover Seattle Police officer, then member of an SPD "proactive policing" Anti-Crime Team (ACT), was driving his motorcycle down a dual-use pedestrian and vehicular alleyway behind Pike Place Market where several nearby taverns were sending their patrons home for the night at the time...
Happy Independence Day
Posted on July 03, 2008First, I want to wish everyone out there a happy and safe Fourth of July holiday weekend.Many of you, I hope, have never experienced how frightening and oppressive it can feel to have your freedom forcibly taken away from you. I know it's something I never expected to experience in my lifetime, and something I hope that you do not experience either...
More Evidence Of Police Misconduct Cover Ups In Seattle
Posted on July 02, 2008There's an interesting article in the Seattle Times today about the SCCPAP report on police accountability that was presented to the Seattle City Council today. While we reported on the SCCPAP report along with panel member Eric Schnapper's commentary weeks ago, there was some serious accusations in that article that caught our attention...
A Possible Police Investigation Cover-Up
Posted on July 02, 2008The public release of the OPA investigation into my complaints concerning what happened to me in November of 2006 has generated some renewed interest in my case, and there seem to be some good reasons for that.First, this finding took over 200 days (well past the 180 deadline for investigations that, if expired, results in automatic exoneration) for the SPD OPA to produce...
Funhouse Case Update: The OPA Process From A Civilian POV
Posted on June 30, 2008Just to give you an idea of what it's like to be on this side of the OPA misconduct investigation process... This was a comment left from the City of Seattle network, the same MO as the cop that always leaves me rude messages as he always starts it out by calling me out by last name...
Poll Results
Posted on June 30, 2008Well, as you may have noticed, I ran a little poll to see what readers would like to see more of from me. The results are final and here's what you had to say:First, the most votes expressed a desire that the site would be killed off and that I would be arrested for creating it...
When Numbers Gamble With People's Lives
Posted on June 27, 2008Since the mid-1990s, Washington State jail populations have increased exponentially. Obsolete facilities built decades ago to hold a handful of prisoners are now packed like sardine tins, with as many prisoners sleeping on the floor as in bunks. Overcrowding has resulted in numerous problems in terms of security and meeting prisoner medical needs...
Get Out!
Posted on June 27, 2008It?s a rare nice day outside here in Seattle. Don?t sit there and read this stuff. Get outside and play! If you don?t have kids, go outside and be a kid for a while. If you have kids, go outside and be a kid with your kids. One of the unfortunate lessons I learned with everything that happened to me last year and I was taken away from my family so suddenly was that you never know when you won?t have the chance to be a part of your children?s memories, to be a part of their lives and share their joy...
The Sad State Of Affairs In Seattle
Posted on June 25, 2008Let?s take a quick look at all that?s going on in Seattle right now, because there?s quite a bit happening here right now, and it?s pretty damn disgraceful.First, King County officials are still arguing with the US Department of Justice over the US DOJ?s stinging rebuke over the deplorable conditions in Seattle?s King County Jail and the mistreatment of detainees that the DOJ termed so egregious that they were a violation of their constitutional rights...
Some Confessions
Posted on June 25, 2008First, a story came out from The Stranger that caught my eye about how city councilman and ex-cop Tim Burgess and his Public Safety committee is planning to revise the city?s obstruction laws to put them more in line with the more ambiguous state laws that give officers more leeway to make arrests for obstruction...
For All You Lurker Lawyers
Posted on June 24, 2008While doing the blog rounds this weekend I found out from the Washington Criminal Defense blog that the second annual "Seattle Law Blogger Meet-up" sponsored by AVVO will be held Thursday, June 26, from 5:30pm until 7:30pm at AVVO's downtown Seattle offices...
What I Did Today
Posted on June 24, 2008Well, I spent the day today writing my last post for this site.No, I?m not quitting...My "last post" is a post that I?ve postdated in case something were to happen to me. I wrote it just in case the people who think I should be arrested, or worse, for what I write finally follow through with that desire...
New Poll and Stuff
Posted on June 23, 2008As you can see above, there's a new poll. I'm trying to figure out how to better serve as an advocate for victims of police misconduct and detainee abuse, so I figured I'd ask our readers for help. It's a multiple choice poll, so you can pick more than one answer...
PARP Implementation: Final Analysis
Posted on June 22, 2008I've done some further review of the contract (released yesterday) that was negotiated between the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officer's Guild and compared the language in that agreement with the PARP police accountability recommendations implementation plan set forth by Seattle mayor Greg Nickels which listed 11 of the 29 recommendations that must be negotiated with the guild in order to achieve full implementation...
The SPD Contract vs The PARP Recommendations
Posted on June 20, 2008Busy day today... In addition to releasing the SCCPAP report on police accountability, the agreement between the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officer's Guild has also been made public and I did a quick review to determine which of the 29 PARP recommendations had been altered or removed from consideration...
The SCCPAP Report On Police Accountability In Seattle
Posted on June 20, 2008The Seattle City Council Police Accountability Panel (SCCPAP) report has been submitted to council and is part of the public record, though it has not been officially released to the press at this time and there is no indication if it will have an official press release like the mayor's Police Accountability Review Panel (PARP) did...
The Views Of SCCPAP Member Eric Schnapper
Posted on June 20, 2008As an addendum to the SCCPAP Report, released earlier today, is a commentary/summary by Professor Eric Schnapper. Professor Schnapper currently teaches Civil rights, Civil Procedure, and Employment Discrimination at the University of Washington law school...
In The News Today...
Posted on June 19, 2008It is essential that justice be done, and it is equally vital that justice not be confused with revenge, for the two are wholly different. ?Oscar AriaA couple stories today got me thinking about a few things...Seattle Police Officer Hospitalized After Assaulted By TeensOk, for those who don't read this site enough to know, we're not "anti-police" and we don't condone violence against police officers...
In Other News...
Posted on June 18, 2008Busy at work this week... plus, to be honest and to give all the many people that hate me some comfort, I've been pretty depressed lately because I just feel so damn isolated and alone. It's funny really, writing this blog has made me a very unpopular person in Seattle...
Seattle's Comparitive Police Brutality Statistics
Posted on June 16, 2008During the contentious contract negotiations between the city of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officer's Guild, representatives of the guild repeatedly asserted that the Seattle Police Department was one of the cleanest in the US, insisting that the complaints against officers were very low for a city of it's size as justification for why they deserved an unprecedented pay raise without having to accept police accountability improvements that had been suggested by the Police Accountability Review Panel...
Happy Fathers Day Everyone
Posted on June 15, 2008"There is nothing noble about being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self." -- Hindu ProverbWhether or not we recognize this fact, it still stands true...We are all of us fathers and mothers to the generations that follow us...
The Sentence Of The Innocent: Shackles Forever Unbroken
Posted on June 15, 2008"Wherever you see persecution, there is more than a probability that truth lies on the persecuted side." -Hugh LatimerAs more frequent readers may recall, I recently went on a business trip, and I still apologize for the lack of posting that it caused...
Declaring War On The Homeless
Posted on June 14, 2008Alexander the Great stood before Diogenes and said, "Ask of me any boon you like." To which, Diogenes replied; "Stand out of my light.""The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law." -AristotleA few years ago, cities across the US started to "declare war on homelessness"...
Friday Update
Posted on June 13, 2008First, as you might see over on the sidebar, the NAACP is continuing their public forums on police brutality in Seattle. It seems they've done four so far and two more are upcoming. Sadly, I would have posted the dates and places but it seems they don't like the site much and never got back to me with that information when I requested it...
Becoming The Monster: Problems With Proactive Policing
Posted on June 08, 2008He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. -Friedrich NietzscheOne of the more recent trends in policing is the use of nearly autonomous elite police units that are trained to be more aggressive than regular officers and are sent into higher crime areas of cities to do whatever it takes to make arrests...
Perceptions of Brutality: Just Having A Bad Day
Posted on June 06, 2008Barnes and a group of friends were leaving a bar on Capitol Hill shortly after midnight on April 13, 2005. Outside was a Seattle Police Sgt. who was on patrol there. A bouncer said he seemed "agitated" and had positioned himself directly in front of the door so people would have to walk around him as they left...
Some More About Those Jails
Posted on June 05, 2008First, there are some interesting posts about Seattle's attempts to get into the jail game over at Blogging Georgetown, including one that reveals some interesting details about the PR firm that the city hired to convince citizens that this jail is a great idea...
Technical Issues
Posted on June 05, 2008Sorry folks, it appears as though the tags and blogger search functionality aren't working quite right, so searches and using the tags list at the bottom don't turn up all the results they should.I'm working on it, but sort of doubt there's much I can do as it's likely a problem at the host site...
Police Cameras: Privacy vs Security 2
Posted on June 04, 2008Gosline, a white man in his mid-20s, says he used his cell phone to take photographs as officers beat Alley-Barnes with fists and nightsticks along the knees, torso, and face and bashed his head repeatedly into the asphalt. Then, Gosline says, another cop appeared, pepper-sprayed him in the face and hauled him and three friends up to the East Precinct on 12th Avenue...
About That News Feed
Posted on June 02, 2008Unfortunately, I've have decided to stop publishing the national police misconduct news feed from badcopnews.com. While that site does advocate a position against police misconduct, the content and opinions of feeds from that site are not necessarily the position of this site...
City of Seattle's High Priced Attorneys Appeal Wrongful Arrest Verdict
Posted on June 02, 2008As predicted, the private attorneys that cost the city of Seattle over a million dollars a year in no-bid contracts to defend officers against misconduct charges have appealed a verdict against the city in the wrongful arrest federal civil rights lawsuit concerning Romelle Bradford...
Slow Weekend
Posted on June 01, 2008Sorry 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...
We Do Requests
Posted on May 30, 2008...well, sometimes at least.Someone commented once that it would be nice if we had more national content and another commenter had said that it would be great if we had a feed for misconduct news stories from another site.So... since we're close to our 200th post milestone and in the fine tradition of doing what one does when one has but one stone yet two birds...
The 200th Post
Posted on May 30, 2008Well, just three short months since our 100th post, this is our 200th blog post... so here's some more statistics for the fun of it:A map of visitor locationsSite Visits: 5,450Pages Viewed: 9,426Average Time per Visit: 02:18Percentage of New Visitors: 73...
Dismantling Accountabilty From The Inside Out
Posted on May 28, 2008A lot of attention has been put on the city of Seattle's civilian oversight and police accountability system's proposed reforms lately. While the city insists that all of the proposed reforms have been put into place with the latest contract agreement with the Seattle Police Officer's Guild, the guild has been hinting that they were able to remove and weaken some of those reforms during negotiations and the city appears to be reluctant to release the details still...
About That Folklife Shooting
Posted on May 27, 2008Seems I might have been right to wonder if the person who has been charged with 3 counts of second degree assault in a shooting that injured three people at the "Folklife" festival over the weekend in Seattle might have been defending himself. Some articles and comments are suggesting that he was attacked by someone who spotted his ankle-holster (which was legal since he has a concealed carry permit)...
A Seattle City Jail
Posted on May 27, 2008In efforts to alleviate overcrowding problems at the King County Corrections Facility, otherwise known as the King County Jail, and in anticipation of a growing number of incarcerated citizens in the future the city of Seattle is contemplating building it's own jail to house pre-trial and convicted defendants...
Memorial Day
Posted on May 26, 2008While I do wish that everyone enjoys their Memorial Day, I hope that my friends currently serving stay safe and get back home soon.I was going to write more... about how many of the people I know who serve do so to defend their idea of what America is, the concept of a free nation based on the rights of the individual as a human being, equal in standing under law...
Before and After
Posted on May 25, 2008So... In this story reported at the Seattle PI, some guy reportedly gets into a fight at a "folk-life festival" at the Seattle Center yesterday and, for whatever stupid reason, supposedly pulls out his loaded gun, for which he had a permit, and reportedly starts pistol-whipping the person he was fighting with...
More On The Removed Accountability Reforms
Posted on May 24, 2008As we've waited to see if the city of Seattle would make the new contract that the police guild accepted public, we went ahead and read through the latest issue of the police guild's newsletter to see if there were any clues about what accountability reform items were removed during negotiations...
A Weak End
Posted on May 23, 2008Well, it's a long three day weekend coming up, sort of happy this one is over. The last few weeks were pretty bad with the city caving in to the police union to weaken accountability reforms and this week has ended on some shaky ground too with me being reminded of how I'll never see anything positive come from what happened to me...
What It's Like To Advocate For Justice When You'll Have None
Posted on May 22, 2008I know, I?ve been doing a bit better lately just sticking to the news and issues of police misconduct and detainee abuse, and I can tell readers appreciate that? thanks.While this site is primarily to raise awareness of these kinds of issues and act as an advocate for victims of police misconduct and detainee abuse, it is also my outlet unfortunately...
Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against King County Jail
Posted on May 21, 2008I've been wondering when this would happen. It's good to see that the King County Jail (located in downtown Seattle) will finally be taken to task over it's failure to treat detainees in need of medical care and preventing the spread of MRSA infections in that hellhole...
Seattle Loses Wrongful Arrest Lawsuit
Posted on May 20, 2008Finally... It's good to read about someone who was mistreated and wrongfully arrested by the Seattle Police going to court and getting justice. It's been far too long to read about pitiful settlements and to hear so many cases of people who can't even get that far...
More Thoughts On The Romelle Bradford Case
Posted on May 20, 2008Instead of updating the previous post on Romelle Bradford's win against the Seattle Police Department, I figured it best to put some additional thoughts about that case here.1. About the proposed internal investigation and the city's lawyer suggesting that it would have been used to defend the city and not help the victim...
Preview of New Changes
Posted on May 19, 2008I've been working on new link pages and have put a few up for comment and testing, so if you see some things changing you'll know why. I'm hoping the planned improvements will help make it easier for victims to find the information they need for help and for people interested in misconduct to find the information they're looking for...
East vs West
Posted on May 19, 2008In Philadelphia...They appear to discipline and fire officers who beat suspects after they have been restrained.In Seattle...They promote them and spend millions each year on a no-bid contract to defend them in court.I wonder which approach does more to restore trust and goodwill between police officers and the public?I also wonder which is more cost effective for taxpayers in the long run?
27 Years
Posted on May 18, 2008"He took my life away from me. What's the difference if it's by a gun, by words or by lies. What's gone is gone." -James Woodard, exonerated by DNA evidence after 27 years of false imprisonment.
Police Guild Approves Contract
Posted on May 16, 2008Seattle Police Officer's Guild members voted 921-106 to approve the latest contract offered by the city that would make them the highest paid police force in Washington State (experienced officers would make over $90,000 a year under the new contract)...
An Example From The OPA Auditor Report
Posted on May 16, 2008I was reading through the latest Seattle Police Department's "Office of Professional Accountability" auditor's report and ran across an example that highlights some of the more glaring problems with police brutality in Seattle and how the problem will continue to build distrust between the public and the Seattle Police Department...
Blogged.com Censors Injustice In Seattle
Posted on May 15, 2008Some of you might remember quite a while back when we announced that a site that rates blogs gave Injustice In Seattle a 6.9 out of 10 and we were pretty happy about that, especially since we never told them about our site.Well, for reasons unexplained to us, that same site has since deleted it's references to and review of our site...
Miscellany
Posted on May 15, 2008Just some various bits of stuff today...First: Yesterday was the first day in several months that we didn't get at least one visit from the City of Seattle's government network. Pretty amazing, maybe everyone was on vacation!Second: We've added some new legal contacts to the police misconduct attorney page and we're happy to report that it's our third most often viewed page! Hopefully the victims of police misconduct are finding the information helpful in their search for justice! Third: On that note, we're always eager to hear from legal experts who would like to have us do a piece to advise victims of police misconduct or detainee abuse on what they should and should not do when they are abused...
City Wrongfully Arrests People To Prove A Point
Posted on May 14, 2008The Seattle Police Department has no problem wrongfully arresting people, this point has been proven time and time again... but recently things took a turn for the worse when the city actually encouraged it's police force to wrongfully arrest nightclub employees for political gains...
More Technical Difficulties
Posted on May 12, 2008Looks like something messed up the layout so the usual links and news aren't at the side but happen to be dropped to the bottom of the page.I'm working on it. *sigh*UPDATE: fixed...
Cops Who Lie Under Oath Never Punished
Posted on May 12, 2008Here's an interesting read over at Simple Justice about what happens to police officers who commit perjury... (Hint: nothing, especially in Seattle)Reminds me of some Seattle Police Department officers who have a history of lying under oath and still testify on the stand...
Police Cameras: Privacy vs Security
Posted on May 12, 2008The mayor of Seattle has created a bit of a tempest in a teapot with his decision to bypass the Seattle City Council and purchase closed circuit security cameras for the police to monitor a local park due to increased complaints of criminal activity...
Hiatus
Posted on May 07, 2008Sorry for the dearth postings lately, again... Been struggling with work and some nasty headaches lately, but should be back at it shortly.Planning some stories on the city's surveillance camera policies that let cops spy on citizens but consistently hides evidence of police misconduct...
Technical Difficulties
Posted on May 05, 2008Sorry if you couldn't get in this morning, seems that there was a problem with the switchover to the new injusticeinseattle.org domain. The host provider wasn't fast enough fixing it so I just switched back and set the new domain to do a redirect to the old domain at injusticeinseattle...
Analyzing The Guild's PARP Accountability Alterations
Posted on May 03, 2008In order to help people understand how removal of the 180 day rule exclusion affects the remaining PARP recommendations I've decided to break it down a little bit better.Here are all 29 of the mayor's PARP accountability recommendations, color-coded to link the interrelated items:While not all interrelated items are interdependent, the following items are interdependent:These items are specifically designed to deal with the loophole that allowed the chief of police to exonerate officers against the recommendations of OPA investigations that had recommended discipline, as in the Alley-Barnes case where officers were exonerated by the chief without explanation and one was promoted after severely beating a man in front of several witnesses without just cause...
Our Comments Policy
Posted on May 03, 2008It appears as though some officers are upset that we don't publish their comments when they send us harassing or intimidating messages. So, to help them out, I'm going to post our comments policy here, even though it's right there one the comments form itself...
A Video To End This Miserable Week
Posted on May 02, 2008Feels like the battle for police accountability and civil rights in Seattle was lost this week, today I just feel like the fight has been completely beaten out of me. I would post "I Fought The Law", but we all already know the police guild always wins here in Seattle...
Paying A Painful Price For Wrongful Convictions
Posted on May 01, 2008While reading details about yet another exoneration of an innocent person who was wrongfully convicted at The Agitator, I had a bit of a flashback. I was back at my fourth week in jail, where I was sent based on false charges and testimony, and I was laying in my bunk watching a movie on the television in a cell that held about 18 people...
Police Guild Might Have Won Battle Against Accountability
Posted on May 01, 2008Jonah Spangenthal-Lee reports at The Stranger Blog SLOG that Seattle Police Officer's Guild president Rich O'Neil has told him that they have successfully negotiated at least one of the mayor's 29 PARP recommendations off the table for their contract...
Pardon Our Dust
Posted on April 30, 2008As you may have noticed, some changes are in the works.One of these changes is in response to the fraudulent injusticeinseattle site that was set up by some Seattle police officers. So now, not only are we at "injusticeinseattle.blogspot.com"We are also located at www...
Hope For Some Better Day
Posted on April 29, 2008Nearly 200 days ago I filed a complaint with the Seattle Police Department's OPA at the suggestion of one of the lawyers I contacted about my case in regards to my mistreatment at the hands of Seattle Police officers. I never really expected anything to come of it, but I was hopeful that maybe they would be honest about what happened, about how they wrongfully tortured an innocent person...
King County Sheriff Ignores Complaints
Posted on April 27, 2008Some of you may remember this story about a woman who's house was searched against her will without a warrant, who was detained and intimidated in the back of a police cruiser while partially dressed for refusing to let the search continue, and then had her home ransacked by a SWAT team who was looking for her boyfriend who wasn't even there...
The Many Deaths of Sean Bell
Posted on April 26, 2008An unarmed Sean Bell was killed before he was to be married by a barrage of 50 bullets fired by NYPD officers 2 years ago.Yesterday, Sean Bell was killed again by a shot fired by the justice system of the United States... at least, this is how it felt to the woman who Sean was to marry the day after he was killed by the police...
Seattle Police Guild Takes Offer To Members
Posted on April 24, 2008It appears as though the contract talks between the Seattle Police Officer's Guild and the City of Seattle have made some progress and the union's negotiators and leadership are in the process of taking the city's offer to the members for consideration...
Seattle Police Guild Takes "Tweaked" Offer To Members
Posted on April 24, 2008It appears as though the contract talks between the Seattle Police Officer's Guild and the City of Seattle have made some progress and the union's negotiators and leadership are in the process of taking the city's offer to the members for consideration...
Changes Ahead
Posted on April 22, 2008Sorry for the slow posting again, I've been having a really hard time with medication changes for my headaches that have really been kicking my butt but not doing a thing for the headaches themselves... just make me feel worse really.Anyway, I've been noticing a lot of traffic from people looking for resources to help them with police misconduct issues and jail abuse issues and sometimes they don't seem to hit the right pages that would give them the information they need about the frighteningly few attorneys left in Seattle that actually help people who have been abused by police and the jail...
King County Jail Inquest
Posted on April 22, 2008The case of Lynn Iszley's slow and gruesome death in the King County Jail was first cited by the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division as one example of inadequate medical care at the King County Jail in it's investigation of that facility that ultimately slammed it for it's potentially deadly constitutional rights violations...
WTF?!?
Posted on April 19, 2008Consolidated the information about the latest bizarre attempts to mess with us here.PS. For the curious among you, those older threats from police are still listed here as well.
Imagine Being Tortured In a Foreign Land...
Posted on April 18, 2008Imagine that you?re in a foreign country and you happen upon a fight, you break it up only to discover that one of the people involved was stabbed. Then you get viciously attacked by a large gang of racist thugs who insist you did it. These assailants beat you with pipes, 2x4s, kick you, and stomp on your head mercilessly while shouting ?kill him? and slinging racial slurs...
Accept No Substitutions?
Posted on April 17, 2008Looks like someone registered an "injusticeinseattle" dot com domain name recently. Since I was asked about it I want to make it clear that it is not mine, nor do I know who registered it, nor what their intentions for the site might be.Until then, I'd recommend against using the contact form they set up there...
New Blog
Posted on April 17, 2008There's a new blog that we really encourage everyone to check out. King County Jail Watch has just started up and already they're putting up some really good content about the deplorable detention conditions in Seattle and King County as well as some great information and analysis of detentions across the US...
Accept No Substitutions? Updated
Posted on April 17, 2008I decided to consolidate the two posts about the latest attempt by Seattle Police officers to harass us here...It started when a reader alerted us to an "injusticeinseattle" dot com site that someone created:But, I didn't create it and nobody told me they were doing it, so who did it was a mystery...
King County Jail Tortured A Man To Death
Posted on April 16, 2008I think people need to read this article and understand that this man was literally slowly tortured to death in the King County Jail for nothing more than an alleged minor drug possession charge.From the Seattle Times article:"Two medical experts who reviewed Iszley's Jail Health Services file say caregivers overlooked or ignored symptoms that the 48-year-old inmate was in serious medical trouble the day before he died, including signs of acute dehydration and pain so severe that it left him sweating and writhing on his cell floor...
Catch-22
Posted on April 15, 2008Catch 22, those impossible situations where you are damned if you do and damned if you don?t. I find myself in several of them because of this site and because of what happened to me last year.For example, the lawyers I talk to about my case tell me that I wouldn?t have a case if I hadn?t been injured, but the nature of my injuries makes it harder to press a case because it is a traumatic brain injury? which means my own testimony is unreliable...
The Threats We Received Appear Serious...Revised
Posted on April 14, 2008Well, some people kindly let me know that, as presented, there are too many details unrelated to the actual threat. My fault, and I apologise for that, I included the threats to have the site taken down in with the threats against me personally and that only added to the confusion...
A Few Police Statistics
Posted on April 13, 2008I'm in the process of doing some pretty difficult research in order to get an idea of how different cities rank in terms of police misconduct and detainee abuse. Of course it began, in part, because I planned on moving away from Seattle soon.Hopefully people understand that it's painful for me to live in the city where I was wrongfully tortured and it's dangerous for me to stay while the local government refuses to acknowledge what happened and put any effort into preventing it from happening again...
Help End Childhood Hunger
Posted on April 12, 2008This Lavender Cupcake is just one of the many goodies you can eat to help end childhood hunger!Not too long ago, before we came to Seattle, things were pretty bad for us. I had lost my job, my wife was too ill to work, one of our sons had died of a congenital defect called Potters Syndrome (Bilateral Renal Agenisis), and we were evicted from our home because we had to make a choice between feeding our children and paying the rent...
He Asks For A Link...
Posted on April 10, 2008Stills from a video of a Knoxville Jail guard beating a mentally ill jail detainee while restrained in a "Devil's Chair".I had comment in response to this post today. He stopped by to tell me that he believes me and to tell me about his story... and then all he asks is this:I'd love a link from your website...
Seattle NAACP Hearings on Police Misconduct
Posted on April 10, 2008Last week we posted information on the first of a supposed series of hearings on police misconduct being sponsored by the NAACP.We've been trying to get more information on the hearings, perhaps a schedule or more details but the local NAACP site is pretty outdated and it appears as though the contact information is no longer valid as the requests we made went unanswered...
Please Stand By...
Posted on April 07, 2008Looks like we're having some technical difficulties today. I couldn't even access my account nor the site earlier and it looked like maybe some of the people who threatened to have Blogger, (owned by Google), kill this site had made good on the threat...
A Police Officer Asks For Thanks...
Posted on April 06, 2008After all the threats and intimidating messages from police officers that I had to endure lately, one has insisted that I should thank them for this:My answer? Well, yes, I should? and I did. I?ve thanked him in person and I?ve tried to thank him via the OPA commendation process (which was ignored as was my complaint about mistreatment)...
Silent Running
Posted on April 06, 2008My apologies, but it's light posting for this weekend. My 1 year old and 8 year old sons are both sick with this nasty bug that's been going around.Stay well!
Silent Running
Posted on April 05, 2008My apologies, but it's light posting for this weekend. My 1 year old and 8 year old sons are both sick with this nasty bug that's been going around.Stay well!
About That Poor Pay And Underappreciation
Posted on April 04, 2008The Seattle Police Officer's Union and their supporters use the same refrain over and over again in their battle against accountability reforms: that the SPD doesn't pay enough to keep officers and that they cannot recruit officers because the city wants to improve the police accountability system...
All Quiet on the Western Front
Posted on April 03, 2008It?s been quiet this week, which could be a good thing or a bad thing. Either SPD officers are making a conscious effort to avoid misconduct during resumed contract negotiations between the city and the police guild, or they?re just getting better at covering it up since Seattle?s citizen review board is being overhauled to be more police-friendly by the guild-friendly councilmember Tim Burgess...
About Those Threats...
Posted on March 31, 2008Seems that the threats and harassment from police officers that we've been subjected to lately has frightened some visitors, which is unfortunate but understandable. While we do our best to protect the identities of those who visit the site with legitimate interests and the victims of abuse, it can be chilling for most people to see that just talking about police misconduct can result in retaliation by the police...
The Righteous Anger of a Child
Posted on March 30, 2008I strongly believe that we not only pass on our genetic heritage to our children, but also our intellectual heritage as well. We share our experiences, the lessons we learn, and our moral values with them because we hope that this information will serve them and help keep them safe...
Threats of Intolerance in America
Posted on March 29, 2008Some of you might remember Salman Rushdie, the British author who wrote a book about the Muslim faith and as a result a fatwa, or holy war, was declared against him, and still is. While he was put under protection and wasn't attacked, many people associated with his book have, including translators who have been stabbed to death or severely wounded in assassination attempts...
Reviewing RateMyCop
Posted on March 27, 2008When I first found out about RateMyCop.com my first thought was, "Ok, sounds like a good idea." Then when several police departments made a big stink about it and tried to push legislatures to make such sites illegal I thought, "Yeah, their arguments make no sense...
America Has Become Too Dangerous
Posted on March 26, 2008I first started this site when I realized that I would never find justice for what happened to me and my family last year and the permanent injuries we suffer and deal with to this day that were, essentially, caused by my trying to do what I thought was right...
NAACP Hosting Police Conduct Hearings In Seattle
Posted on March 26, 2008Per the Seattlest and the Seattle PI, the local chapter of the NAACP is hosting a series of hearings throughout Seattle and surrounding areas in the next few weeks in order to assess police conduct issues with minorities and the poor.The first hearing is scheduled for Thursday, March 27 at 6:00pm in the Garfield Community Center...
About Internet Anonymity
Posted on March 25, 2008For the police officers who have sent us such lovely comments in the last few days, I offer the following bit of friendly advice...Posting death threats anonymously...Isn't really that anonymous...Thanks.
TBI: The Invisible Injustice
Posted on March 24, 2008I?ve been debating whether or not to discuss this, but ultimately it?s better that I bring this out in the open on my terms instead of waiting for someone to bring it up as a way to attack what this site is about because there are more than a few people who already know about it...
Media Mistaken About King County Jail Problems
Posted on March 23, 2008The Seattle Post Intelligencer recently printed an article about 65 cited cases of MRSA at the King County Jail within the last 5 months. While it's good that these sort of stories are being reported, there are some unfortunate inaccuracies in that report and it really doesn't do enough to describe how this should matter to the average citizen...
Animals > Human Detainees!
Posted on March 22, 2008As promised earlier this week, we've analyzed the stories generated in the media stemming from the findings of inadequate care in King County's animal shelters and compared it to the number of stories generated a few months ago stemming from the Department of Justice's charges of inadequate care of human pre-trial detainees in the King County Jail...
Weekend Slowdown
Posted on March 22, 2008Sorry folks, I do have some stories I want to work on but I've been pretty preoccupied the last few days because of my test results and probably won't be posting for a few more days unless any important new stories come up.If you're curious, which I doubt, send me an email...
Cops Everywhere... They Lurves Us
Posted on March 19, 2008This......should be threat-tacular. Wonder if the good-ole-boys in blue out there will come up with better threats than the ones here in Seattle?Guess it just proves that they're the same everywhere, unfortunately.(and people wonder why I moderate comments here)
Why The Delay, OPA?
Posted on March 19, 2008On the City of Seattle's Seattle Police Department Office of Professional Accountability website you supposedly can view the findings of OPA investigations into allegations of police misconduct. In fact, according to the site:But... What's that you say? It's nearly the end of March and...
Human Detainees < Animals?
Posted on March 19, 2008Is a person who is accused of a crime worth less than an animal and should that person be treated as such?It seems that we have the chance, in Seattle at least, to put that question to the test. I've been a bit stunned that the King County Council has put more weight into fixing the problems discovered at the King County Animal Shelters than it did when they were told by the DOJ about the inhumane conditions at their King County Jail...
King County Executive Ignores Civil Rights Abuses While Arguing For Social Justice
Posted on March 17, 2008King County Executive Ron Simms has started a so-called crusade to examine issues of social injustices. This would be admirable if this weren't the same Ron Simms who insists that abusing pre-trial detainees and denying them medical care in the King County Jail wasn't a violation of their constitutional rights in response to a Department of Justice investigation that found deadly rights violations at the jail...
West Seattle Teenager Missing
Posted on March 17, 2008I know, it's not a police misconduct story, but I have an autistic son so it's a personal thing.This girl, Jordan King, has been missing since Thursday and she is autistic so doesn't do well with remembering directions or phone numbers... So if you see this 14 year old girl, last seen wearing light pink denim pants, a black tank top, black tennis shoes, and black hoodie with silver detail, please help her and call 911...
Help End Childhood Hunger
Posted on March 17, 2008This Lavender Cupcake is just one of the many goodies you can eat to help end childhood hunger!Not too long ago, before we came to Seattle, things were bad for us. I had lost my job, my wife was too ill to work, one of our sons had died of a congenital defect called Potters Syndrome (Bilateral Renal Agenisis), and we were evicted from our home because we had to make a choice between feeding our children and paying the rent...
Washington State's Anti-Crime Bill May Be Unconstitutional
Posted on March 15, 2008Washington state's legislature has passed an "anti-gang bill" that includes provisions to fund police anti-gang taskforces, increased penalties for gang-related crimes, and supposedly deter recruitment by punishing adults who recruit teens into gangs...
Woman Reports Mistreatment By King County Sheriff's Deputies
Posted on March 14, 2008We received a rather disturbing email earlier this week from a single mother of two who told us her story of a very frightening encounter with King County Sheriff's deputies who had ransacked her house without a warrant despite her refusing them permission to search it, detained her when she insisted that they stop searching her home, drove her to an abandoned lot to intimidate her while she was partially dressed in the back of a cruiser in an attempt to garner a coerced confession...
Woman Recovering From Surgery Denied Medication At King County Jail
Posted on March 13, 2008Imagine receiving a call one day telling you that your sister, who was heavily medicated and recovering from reconstructive surgery, had gone missing. Imagine searching everywhere with your family and friends for days, only to discover that she was in the last place you thought to look...
The Police Guild's Multi-Pronged Assault Against Accountability
Posted on March 12, 2008A number of developing stories have caught our concern, not individually, but when paired together in the context of the current battle between the city of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officer's Guild over police accountability reforms.Contract talks had been derailed for over a month between the city and the guild over pay raises and the widely-hailed accountability reforms proposed by mayor Greg Nickels' Police Accountability Review Panel...
Our Communication and Reporting Policy
Posted on March 10, 2008Last week we received a few rather nasty and uncivil complaints about our site, (aside from the usual threats to have the site taken down that we often receive). To be precise, we received complaints about the matter of providing sources for our claim that we?ve received information about ongoing abuses at the King County Jail as jail representatives and the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division are in continuing talks to determine whether the jail will take sufficient steps to resolve the deadly constitutional rights violations it has been found to be committing at that facility...
Councilman Burgess Asks For OPARB Applications
Posted on March 07, 2008Jonah Spangenthal-Lee "double-dog dared" me and a few other persons who talk about police accountability issues (one other was anti-accountability vs my pro-accountability stance, not sure about the third) to apply for vacant positions on the City of Seattle's Office of Professional Accountability Review Board that acts as a civilian oversight component of Seattle's police oversight and accountability system...
While DOJ Investigation Continues... So Do The Abuses
Posted on March 05, 2008As negotiations between the US Department of Justice and the King County Jail continue over findings of deadly constitutional rights violations that the DOJ investigation found to have occurred at the Seattle jail in November 2007, we've continued to receive credible reports that those same abuses are still occuring at that facility...
Police Accountability Jeopardized By Editorial Spin
Posted on March 04, 2008Just days after a stunning series of articles by the Seattle Post Intelligencer that served to expose instances of institutionalized misconduct within the Seattle Police Department, the same paper issued forth an unfortunate opinion piece from it's own editorial staff entitled "Seattle Police: Healing Reviews"...
180 Days
Posted on March 01, 2008The contract talks between the Seattle Police Officer's Guild and the City of Seattle appear to be completely shut down after the city revealed details about the salaries the guild was turning down. The guild's refusal to accept all 29 of the mayor's Police Accountability Review Panel's (PARP) recommended reforms to the Seattle Police Department's police accountability and oversight system cost members as much as 33...
Sick Day
Posted on February 29, 2008Sorry folks, hate to do this with so many stories coming out on the heals of the Seattle Police Officer's Guild refusal to accept accountability reforms which resulted in the utter breakdown of contract talks... But my headaches have been really wearing me down these last few days, they're making me physically ill and it's really hard to concentrate...
The 100th Post Pause
Posted on February 28, 2008Well, more than 100 posts actually and we had planned something for that post... But even though we carried past that landmark because of the guild contract talk fiasco, we've decided to share a few statistics about our site for any interested readers as a little break anyway...
Video Of Hays Arrest Released
Posted on February 28, 2008Busy day...The Stranger has put up the video of the brutal assault on Mark Hays by the Seattle Police Department's "Anti-Crime Team" for jaywalking has been put up on YouTube...Sorry, I'm not offering any additional commentary, my head hurts so bad today it's making me feel like throwing up, watching this brings up some painful memories...
Great Series At The Seattle Post Intelligencer
Posted on February 28, 2008If you need any more reasons to demand that the Seattle Police Officer's Guild stop obstructing the city's efforts to introduce accountability reforms, read the new series of reports at The Seattle Post Intelligencer called "The Strong Arm Of The Law"...
A Council Member's Reaction
Posted on February 28, 2008Today the Seattle Post Intelligencer ran an article about how some people in Seattle are more at risk for being falsely accused of "obstruction" (otherwise known as "Contempt Of Cop"), which is often a cover for police brutality, as part of it's ongoing series called "The Strong Arm of The Law"...
A Plea... And An Offer
Posted on February 28, 2008Dear Seattle Police Officer's Guild (aka. SPOG)All we want is for you to accept the OPARP's 29 police accountability recommendations. We want to be able to say that we don't fear our police officers, that we respect them, that we like them, that we are proud of them and the way they conduct themselves in the line of duty...
A Second Council Member Responds
Posted on February 26, 2008As a part of our coverage of the broken-down contract talks between the city of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officer's Guild and what it means for the 29 proposed police misconduct accountability recommendations submitted by the mayor's review board, we've sent out requests to city council members to see what their thoughts are about the possibility of the reforms making it through the battle between the union and the city...
Guild Threatens City After City Releases Contract Offer Details
Posted on February 26, 2008The Seattle Police Officer's Guild has threatened the city of Seattle with even larger pickets than were originally planned and lawsuits over the city's move to bypass the guild and reveal the details of the contract the guild was turning down in stalled contract talks...
Nightmares
Posted on February 25, 2008A break, I suppose, from the constant onslaught of misconduct news stories and the battles between a public that demands an accountable police force and a police force that refuses to be accountable to the public.The thing is, there is no support group for survivors of police misconduct, there are no meetings in coffee shops or places where we can go and talk about what happened to us at the hands of people who have the power to destroy lives at a whim...
We're National
Posted on February 23, 2008No, it isn't what you think, we still focus almost entirely on Seattle police misconduct and detainee abuse issues... but some of our content just got picked up by Reuters and The Chicago Sun Times.For any new readers, we focus on problems in Seattle because we feel keeping things local are our best chance to making changes, but we also feel it is important that others see what happens here in Seattle to learn from Seattle's failures and successes in our efforts to improve police oversight and accountability...
A Seattle City Council Member Responds
Posted on February 23, 2008In a previous article, we had sent out an invitation to Seattle city council members to share with us what their thoughts were on the current police accountability reform efforts and the Seattle Police Officer's Guild's seeming intransigence in regards to those reforms...
How Many?
Posted on February 22, 2008This video, aside from further confirming my utter fear of how easy it is for anyone with a badge to retaliate against anyone they please, makes me ill because I wonder just how many of the millions in US jails and prisons don't belong there because of dishonest cops like this...
The Waiting Game
Posted on February 22, 2008It appears as though an uneasy silence is hovering over the city of Seattle as a few different shoes are preparing to drop... Here's a look at the issues currently waiting for resolution:The US Department of Justice investigation into deadly constitutional rights violations at the King County Correctional Facility(KCCF) is still ongoing...
The Evergreen College Incident
Posted on February 22, 2008Again, not a Seattle story, but a reader sent in this link to a blog that put up the video footage of what occurred a few days ago down at Evergreen College. (Thank you, by the way!)A few questions pop into my mind after watching the videos and reading the different accounts of what happened...
Debunking The Police Guild Propaganda
Posted on February 18, 2008As the Seattle Police Officer's Guild prepares to bully the mayor and city council into backing down on demands for police accountability reforms again, it has been making some rather dishonest claims that have gone unchallenged in the media. Let's take a look at some of the history involved and how it debunks the guild's dishonest statements about how they don't feel the need to fix a system that is currently so easy for bad officers to cheat...
A Call to Counter-Protest SPOG
Posted on February 15, 2008As you may know, the Seattle Police Officer's Guild plans to picket city hall soon, in order to demand a pay raise even though they refuse to accept any police accountability reforms.In case you're wondering, I am currently checking to see what it takes to legally counter-protest the picket to demand that the SPOG accept all recommended accountability reforms before any talk of pay increases...
Copy Cat Cops Revisited
Posted on February 15, 2008A 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...
Lawfirm Urged OPA To Stop Misconduct Investigations
Posted on February 14, 2008The Seattle Post Intelligencer ran a piece today that criticized the city for paying a private lawfirm millions of dollars to defend cops in misconduct cases on a no-bid contract. But burried in there is a startling revelation, this lawfirm told the internal investigation unit (the OPA) of the Seattle Police Department to stop investigating misconduct cases when civil rights violation lawsuits were filed because "the risks are it can create information we are not aware of that can harm our case...
A Busy Seattle Police Misconduct News Day
Posted on February 14, 2008Today 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, 2008The 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, 2008As 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, 2008This 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...
Police Union Defends An Officer With A History
Posted on February 09, 2008The 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, 2008Looks 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, 2008Last 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, 2008Well, 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, 2008We'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, 2008The 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, 2008Well, 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, 2008Someone 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, 2008In 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, 2008Sounds 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, 2008Well, 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, 2008Reaction 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, 2008Lately 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, 2008I'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, 2008The 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, 2008In 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, 2008Seattle 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, 2008Before 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, 2008The 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, 2008As 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, 2008Remember 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, 2008This 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, 2008Council 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, 2008An 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, 2008UpdatedThe 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, 2008Yes, 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...
Accountability Review Panel Update
Posted on January 23, 2008I wrote a post earlier today questioning the delay of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels' Office of Professional Accountability Review Panel's (OPARP) final report that was due in November but was rescheduled with very little warning and no explanation.I decided to check, in the spirit of fairness, to see what was going on and was told that the OPARP has been meeting in private since November to finalize the report, which may be finished as soon as this week...
Injustice In Seattle Rated a 6.9 at Blogged.Com
Posted on January 23, 2008A site called Blogged.com, which apparently performs reviews of blogs, rated your's truly a 6.9 out of 10, or "Good" in their parlence. This places the Injustice In Seattle blog at position 34 in the Law catagory.I appreciate that, sometimes I think I'm rating about a 3...
Mayor's Police Accountability Review Panel is MIA?
Posted on January 23, 2008Last year, after a string of high profile police misconduct cases resulted in exonerations by Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske which resulted in the entire accountability process and the chief's interference being blasted by the Office of Professional Accountability's (OPA) civilian review board (OPARB), Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels created a "blue ribbon" Office of Professional Accountability Review Panel (OPARP) to review the investigative and accountability process to see if there were problems...
Did Seattle Police Union Hire A PR Firm?
Posted on January 23, 2008This story was retracted, further fact checking confirmed that the information was unfounded.
Police Misconduct and Crime Statistics
Posted on January 22, 2008A Seattle Times columnist, Nicole Brodeur, put up an interesting opinion piece today where she rightly questions the timing of Seattle mayor Greg Nickels' announcement that crime statistics in Seattle are at an all-time low "thanks to the Seattle Police Department" while there have been a slew of incredibly violent high-profile attacks on citizens that have gone unsolved in the first few weeks of this year...
SPD Officer Crashes Into Two Vehicles After Running a Red
Posted on January 22, 2008image courtesy of KOMO 4 News Just after 8pm tonight an SPD officer rammed into an SUV after running a red light at high speed without its emergency lights or siren activated, sending the SUV into a nearby apartment building before the police cruiser continued onward to smash into a Jeep...
King County Sheriff Officers Update
Posted on January 21, 2008Here's an update on a post I wrote earlier about two sheriff's deputies being caught falsifying reports:Some additional details have come to light thanks to a disgruntled King County Sheriff's Deputy who leaked details about internal policy changes in an effort to try and defend the accused officers on a public message board...
King's Dream Remains Unrealized in Sleepless Seattle
Posted on January 21, 2008Last year brought us news stories detailing accounts of an upstanding African American being chased, repeatedly tasered, and detained for simply being black in the wrong neighborhood. Videos of a black man being tasered on the ground after being pepper sprayed and pummeled by cops simply for talking back...
Gil May Be Incompetent, But Sue Isn't
Posted on January 19, 2008King County Sheriff, Sue Rahr, has taken a hard line on police misconduct within the King County Sheriff's Department while Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske has proven to be utterly impotent against the Seattle Police Officer's Guild's efforts to protect corrupt officers at any cost...
Stranger Reporter Describes SPD Brutality Video
Posted on January 18, 2008There's another Hays Case update over at The Stranger's blog (SLOG) where Jonah Spangenthal-Lee describes a video he watched of the Hays and Lujan case where undercover SPD "Anti-Crime Team" officers repeatedly bashed Hays' head into the pavement in front of a stunned crowd of witnesses over an alleged jaywalking offense...
Whitewashing the Deadly King County Jail
Posted on January 17, 2008King County issued a press release yesterday regarding how they are taking steps to address the Department of Justice investigative findings of blatant and deadly constitutional rights abuses that have been occurring at the King County Jail located in Seattle...
Rethinking Burgess
Posted on January 15, 2008In a previous post I despaired at the prospect of Tim Burgess, the ex-police officer council member recently elected thanks to the heavy-handed efforts of the Seattle Police Guild, taking over the reigns at the council's Public Safety board where Nick Licata, a long time police accountability advocate, sat until this year...
First KCCF Inmate Death of 2008
Posted on January 14, 2008Another inmate at the King County Jail died yesterday. The name and cause of death are being withheld for now, but the timeline suggests the usual culprit.The SUSPECT, a 49 year old male, was arrested December 28th under suspicion of auto theft. He was taken to Harbourview on Jan 2 and died 3 days later on Jan 5...
Planned Site Updates
Posted on January 10, 2008Pardon Our DustI'm planning on restructuring the site so that it's easier for people to review cases of misconduct. While it would work better on a regular hosted website instead of a pure blog like this, I don't have the resources to host a site. As you know, I do this on my own without any public or private support and I'm still in (growing) debt from my own encounter with police misconduct and prisoner abuse...
Hays Case Update
Posted on January 07, 2008Again, from The Stranger... as you may recall the Seattle Police Department charged Hays with Assaulting an Officer after Hays was first restrained and then repeatedly had his face bounced off the pavement by undercover officers for jaywalking.The officers claimed Hays had attacked them first after they restrained his friend, for jaywalking, but multiple witnesses have not corroborated the officer's accounts of the arrest...
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