Bad Cops & Prosecutors

Injustice In Seattle Twitter Project Update

Posted on April 12, 2009
Thought 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, 2009
Log 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, 2009
This 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, 2009
Comment 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...

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About the 2008 Annual Report From the Seattle Police OPA

Posted on April 09, 2009
The 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, 2009
On 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, 2009
Police 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, 2009
I 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, 2009
If 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, 2009
There'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, 2009
With 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, 2009
I 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, 2009
What 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, 2009
Image 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, 2009
This 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, 2009
Hey 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, 2009
Well, 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, 2009
As 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, 2009
Seattle 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, 2009
The 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, 2009
President 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, 2009
Video 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, 2009
Currently, 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, 2009
Visits 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, 2009
I 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, 2009
 News 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, 2009
While 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, 2009
Depiction 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, 2009
Results 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...

Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 03-05-09

Posted on March 05, 2009

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