Bad Cops & Prosecutors

In The News Today...

Posted on June 19, 2008
It 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, 2008
Busy 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, 2008
During 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...

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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, 2008
Alexander 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, 2008
First, 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, 2008
He 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, 2008
Barnes 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, 2008
First, 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, 2008
Sorry 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, 2008
Gosline, 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, 2008
Unfortunately, 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, 2008
As 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, 2008
Sorry 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, 2008
Well, 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, 2008
A 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, 2008
Seems 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, 2008
In 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, 2008
While 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, 2008
So... 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, 2008
As 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, 2008
Well, 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, 2008
I 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, 2008
I'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, 2008
Finally... 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, 2008
Instead 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, 2008
I'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, 2008
In 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?

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