Bad Cops & Prosecutors

Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 11-12-08

Posted on November 12, 2008
Yet 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, 2008
Officers 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, 2008
fMRI 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, 2008
Seattle 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...

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Election 2008

Posted on November 03, 2008

NewsWatch Halloween 2008 Edition

Posted on October 31, 2008
In 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, 2008
Newlywed 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, 2008
Sorry 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, 2008
Sorry 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, 2008
Today 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, 2008
Police 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, 2008
A 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, 2008
In 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, 2008
Police 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, 2008
A 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, 2008
UPDATED: 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, 2008
Yet 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, 2008
Article 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, 2008
Injustice 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, 2008
Police 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, 2008
Police 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, 2008
Numerous 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, 2008
James 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, 2008
For 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, 2008
Recent 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, 2008
Abbreviated 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, 2008
Sorry 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, 2008
When 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, 2008
Prosecutors 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, 2008
A 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...

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