As the King County Prosecutor weighs possible criminal charges against one of his officers and an ongoing series of controversies over excessive violence hit the department, SPD Chief John Diaz will be on Capitol Hill this week for the January meeting of the East Precinct Crime Prevention Coalition. Details on the community meeting are below. Given the chief’s appearance at the session, organizers are requiring more structure than usual for anybody who wants to speak at the meeting. According to coalition chair Stephanie Tschida , speakers must arrive promptly at 6 PM to sign-up and are asked to limit their statements and questions to 60 seconds. Note also that the meeting will be held at Seattle University instead of the Vocational Institute at 23rd and Jackson where it is normally held.
Have a good Capitol Hill question for Diaz? You can practice keeping it to a minute — or less — in the CHS comments.
I fear police under any circumstance in which they dislike my lawful activity. If you bother them, they’ll throw you in jail on charges of some combination of resisting arrest, obstruction, failure to obey, or disturbing the peace, and you’ll either plead guilty to something you did not do or spend many thousands of dollars defending yourself. I’ve seen this first-hand elsewhere (my legal bill is well over $10K at this point), and I strongly suspect it happens in Seattle as well.
Every few months, we learn of another incident in which Seattle police officers push the boundaries of appropriate force, and every time, we get a cookie-cutter, mad-libs-style, use of force report about set jaws and thousand-yard stares, followed by paid vacation for the officer until the public forgets about the incident and we do a deferential OPA investigation resulting in an admonishment and a frownie sticker.
They beat us outside of nightclubs, they hold us down in the street with on arm pinned behind our back and kick us in the face while telling us to stop resisting arrest — for jaywalking, they stomp on our hands once once they have us on the ground, threatening to “beat the fucking Mexican piss out of” us, they run into convenience stores in plain clothes and kick us in the knees when we put our hands up, and they handcuff us, then punch us in the face — for jaywalking. They state under oath that their training tells them that someone with a three inch knife is such a danger to them at 20 feet that it is appropriate to shoot him dead.
Video evidence often acts as an impartial witness when there are conflicting stories of our interaction with them while they’re on the job, but when they lie about our behavior in their squad cars, they lie about the dash cam video going missing. When we try to film them passing us on a sidewalk using our own cameras, they
they threaten us and try to stop us from filming.
Around 2004, at a Capitol Hill Community Council meeting at the Cal Anderson Park shelter house, the then-new captain of the East Precinct answered to a room full of people in response to my question about how to tell when one is under arrest that we don’t need to know, but the police will know.
They tell us they’re under-staffed and under-funded while they leave violent crime and property crimes go unsolved and dress up in paramilitary gear to bust card rooms and jack shacks, breaking into homes at night with battering rams and guns blazing under the suspicion that there is cannabis in the home — wasting scarce police resources on that which is their lowest enforcement priority. Have they no concern for the will of the people? Do we hire them to serve and protect or to live out their childhood SWAT team fantasies?
I want to know what Chief Diaz will do to get his staff under control and keep the public safe from abuse from our police. I don’t want a bunch of P.R. bullshit; I want a plan.
Hey – I really admire you for standing up to small-minded tyranny. I’m sorry you had to pay out of your own pocket, but I hope the knowledge that you are helping to defend a society where bullies don’t get to decide what the rest of us get to do and when is some recompense.
And yeah, there needs to be a plan to fix the police. I don’t think it’s going to come from Diaz, though. I am hoping the feds will come in and document the corruption at SPD to such a degree that McGinn has no choice but to appoint a new chief and order a thorough house cleaning at SPD.
My legal bill for defending my lawful activity is $0.
That is it – less than 60 seconds.