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

Bad Cops & Prosecutors

: Injustice in Seattle

Hays Case Update

By David Packman

Again, 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. Instead dozens of bystanders seem to insist that Hays and his friend were tackled by the plain-clothes officers and brutally beaten by those officers even after they had been handcuffed for nothing more than, well, jaywalking.

Hays is due in court for assault on an officer on January 22. But, as you can see, it seems that the charges are trumped up as an excuse for the brutal over-reaction by the same group of undercover officers with a history of unprovoked attacks and who have been in the paper numerous times for beating jaywalkers and other assaults where they failed to announce themselves as officers until after the fact, as reported here.

Cases like this prove to me that nobody is safe in Seattle, especially not me. It's clear that the police here are free to attack anyone they want for any reason they want without fear of being held accountable... and worse, that they can punish the people they attack even more afterward by falsifying reports without any fear of being held accountable for it whatsoever.

I wish Hays the best of luck, but historically the SPD gets away with making these kinds of accusations, I hope he's one of the exceptions.

In the meantime, lord save me if the SPD spots me in public... because nobody else in Seattle will when they beat the life out of me.

Full post as published by Injustice in Seattle on January 07, 2008 (boomark / email).