Dominic Holden, who works at Seattle’s alt-weekly The Stranger, had an unpleasant run-in with some local cops and isn’t going to take it:
[…] When the US Department of Justice alleged that the Seattle Police Department was routinely using excessive force, federal prosecutors stressed in their 2011 report that officers were escalating ordinary interactions into volatile, sometimes violent, situations. That was followed last summer by a county audit upbraiding the King County Sheriff’s Office for mismanaging misconduct cases and not taking complaints seriously. Now a federal court controls the SPD under a reform plan, and the county’s new sheriff is under unprecedented pressure to discipline his deputies, so the two agencies should be showing more civility on the beat. Or so you’d think.
The Sheriff’s officer involved has a long history of complaints and issues and has been suspended with pay after Holden filed a complaint. Reading the piece, it’s clear that the only reason that the complaint was taken seriously was because Holden wrote it up in The Stranger.
It’s pretty gutsy of Holden and The Stranger to do this. They’re definitely leaving themselves open for petty harassment, being frozen out of stories, and generally being hated by Seattle cops. That’s probably why you don’t see this kind of story in most city newspapers.
Another Holocene Human
No title–did the blog barf? Poor widdle server.
Speaking of atrocities, just saw this:
alternet.org/hard-times-usa/why-do-people-raising-our-children-earn-poverty-wages
Why do caretakers live in poverty? Kind of implies something about how much we value those they care for, also, too. Above could apply to home health workers, not just daycare.
NotMax
Or it just might – might – be that “most” cities’ forces don’t routinely engage in such behavior, and/or have better funded and trained response to complaint units, with real teeth.
SiubhanDuinne
Off topic, mister mix, but I wanted to thank you (I assume it was you) for restoring the autofill name and email fields. Typing SiubhanDuinne every.single.time was getting tiresome :-)
On topic, Holden’s story was fascinating, and horrifying in its (relative) banality. He has said he’ll continue to report as the case unfolds. It will be interesting to see where this goes. However, even if those two specific cops end up being disciplined, I’m not sanguine about such an outcome changing what appears to be a deeply systemic problem.
Jax6655
@NotMax:
You’re joking right?
MikeJ
Can you point to an alt-weekly anywhere on earth that has a pleasant relationship with the local cops?
mistermix
@NotMax: Name one.
@MikeJ: Fair point.
TS
The picture at the top of the article is worth the thousand words. 6 armed police surrounding one young black man. What chance he to lodge a complaint.
NotMax
@mistermix
Give me a minute to open the blinds.
Ah, there it is – can see where the police headquarters building is from my picture window.
160,000 (plus or minus 20,000 or more tourists on any given day) may not be huge, but would meet the criteria for ‘city’ most anywhere. (Though we technically have separate towns and villages, all government is at the county level. The mayor is the mayor of Maui, for example.)
deep
Jeez. Sometimes I wish this shit would happen where I live. If I was walking by while the cops were yelling at Holden I’d whip out my phone too. In the 13 years I’ve lived in Boston I’ve never seen it happen.
(Which is not to say that it doesn’t happen in Boston, but I guess I live and work in the fancy neighborhoods where cops aren’t douchebags.)
NotMax
Just because.
The late, multi-talented and loose-limbed Tony Azito, live on stage in Central Park.
A Policeman’s Lot Is Not A Happy One
p.a.
Are psych tests usual for police recruits, at least in larger cities? Give some people a uniform, a weapon, and a presumption of propriety…
ant
Do police get random drug screens for steroids?
Rustydude
The Stranger does a great job reporting on the various local law enforcement agencies. They have for years, and largely without most favored access designation. I don’t think they have much to fear in regards to backlash. The Stranger also has a pretty large influence with it’s readers in regards to politics, and the choices that readers exercise in the voting booth. It has to be one of the best alt-weeklies in the nation.
NotMax
The Maui police did recently purchase their first armored vehicle (with grant money from the feds, IIRC).
But as it has no armoring whatsoever underneath and is equipped with off-the-rack standard tires, it is basically useful primarily for parades and as a refuge to sneak away for a few hands of paiute.
The Moar You Know
You sure don’t see this kind of story in San Diego newspapers. Our cops just kill anyone who pisses them off, and our DA signs off on it with a very well-used rubber stamp. The San Diego district attorney’s office has never prosecuted a cop for excessive use of force. Not once. Ever. Those cases have always had to go to civil court.
I appreciate the problems of the guy in Seattle but there’s a lot of this country where you have to worry about a lot more than “getting hassled”.
@NotMax: hahahahahahahaha. Horseshit, my friend.
IanY77
Good story from around Christmastime 2010 (see righties? I can say that word and not smoke and melt like the Wicked Witch at the end of the Wizard of Oz). A guy ran into a store to pick up a gift, left his car on, and came out to cops standing around the car. The cops forced him to put his hands on the hood, long after it was determined that there was no threat. When the guy lifted a hand off the hood, the cops beat him, and then claimed that he “bit” the cop’s finger (that was plunging into the man’s mouth, repeatedly). Link with video:
westseattleblog.com/2013/01/lawyer-for-west-seattle-man-goes-public-with-video-of-client-biting-poli…
It’s clear that the cops lost control there. The police statement claims that “Drugs fell out if [Egan’s] pocket” but no drug charges were filed.
lojasmo
Story just broke that a few dozen cops in Minnesota went and gave away small ammounts of marijuana to Occupy protesters in a drug recognition program.
mistermix
@NotMax:
I’m sure the police in Sioux Falls, SD (roughly the same size) are awesome, too. The Rochester NY police, (metro area 1.2 million) are not. Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City: they have had a few issues over the years.
Roger Moore
@NotMax:
I see you have a future in stand-up comedy.
Maxwel
@IanY77:
The cop was wearing heavy gloves, yet he claims that he was bitten bloody?
Rex Everything
Holden’s reporting on this is excellent. I think everyone who’s had to deal with asshole cops—which is a whole lotta people—will be cheering him on as this proceeds.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
Most cities?
You do live a sheltered life, in a beautiful place. Most of us are not anywhere near that fortunate. Most of us live in major metropolitan areas where the police are very heavily armed and equipped with the attitude that we are all criminals and that they have every right to extract justice as they see it, on the spot.
I know you are informed because your comments are usually informative and well written. How can you not see that you live in the exception and not the example?
ranchandsyrup
Bad Cop. No Donut.
Roger Moore
@mistermix:
I’m not sure of that at all. My impression- perhaps out of date- is that Sioux Falls has some of the same tensions other cities have, but with Native Americans coming in off the reservation rather than African Americans living in the city. I would not be at all confident that their police department is wonderful and enlightened.
EthylEster
@MikeJ:
The Stranger LOVES being hated by various constituencies. They rock.
Other alt-weeklies, not so much. For example, the Seattle Weekly.
EthylEster
@Rustydude:
After I read the WA voter pamphlet and mark all the candidates I still have questions about, I familiarize myself with the Stranger recommendations. They are very convincing in their arguments. Unlike the moribund Seattle Times.
taylormattd
@MikeJ: being the “gay” / alternative weekly, The Stranger has *always* had a semi-hostile relationship with the cops here. And as Dominic’s story notes, the SPD is currently under the supervision of the Justice Department because it is completely terrible.
Another Holocene Human
Has everyone forgotten the very, very ugly history between labor, the local barons, and the cops in the PNW? How cops shot working class people during a general strike? That might have been Everett. Logging and mining towns. Wobblie country. And let’s not even get started on what they did to labor leaders.
When you see the cops vs. anarchists at WTO and other protests from Seattle to Oakland that is very, very old bad blood. Not saying that I agree with black bloc tactics in the least, but people are not malingering or making shit up about the cops.
chanster
@p.a.:
My younger brother went through the Seattle Police Dept interview process. He got pretty far along, all the way to the polygraph test. Then they determined he was too nice and concientous to be a cop, and no, I’m not kidding, They really are looking for assholes to become officers. And most of them don’t live in the city and are full of contempt for us Seattle liberals. Thank God my brother didn’t get that job.
Chris
@Another Holocene Human:
Yep. And that old bad blood’s not just in the PNW but in much of the rest of the country too in some way, shape or form – cops really aren’t fans of reformers agitating for the disenfranchised.
It also contrasts sharply with the relaxed or even supportive attitude that cops often had with the militias enforcing the elites’ desires, whether legal (Pinkertons) or wink wink nudge nudge illegal (Ku Klux Klan).
The Moar You Know
@chanster: I can confirm both for my local police department (to be a beat cop) and for the California prison guard system, there is a cutoff point for the IQ exam. As in, if you score too high you’re disqualified.
And yeah, they are not looking for, and do not hire, nice people.
NotMax
@Ruckus
I do not (and did not) deny the existence of institutional abuse of authority among too many police forces, neither would I ever attempt to excuse it.
Call me naive, but I also don’t accept that it is universal, nor that it is ineradicable.
The reporter wrote about what he experienced, and what he knows locally. I wrote about what I have experienced and what I know locally. The two are not incompatible, they are just points on a spectrum.
gravie
@notmax: But from which you extrapolated a generality — that perhaps most places don’t experience this kind of problem with their police. You really can’t have it both ways.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
And that is why I said that you are lucky and live in a very nice place.
I also was not intending to say that all cops are major assholes.
But way, way too many of them are, along with the many, many police departments way overreach.
Your post came off like the vast majority of departments are like the one in your home town. They are not. Not even close.
So you may be right about it being a spectrum but that spectrum has a little green photon blip on your end and the other end is like the power of a thousand suns and which takes up the vast majority of that spectrum.
NotMax
@gravie
I think my original use (twice!) of the qualifier ‘might’ negates the comment being proposed as a generality, either pro or con.
The intention at the time was to question the generality seemingly presumed in mistermix’s post.
Apparently not totally successfully, but so it goes.