First, let me say that sharing this Seattle Police incident report isn’t an attempt to add to any freaking out over the kinds of illegal stuff that goes on in Cal Anderson Park even though the Slog just churned up this report of a ‘roving gang of hooligans’ supposedly committing acts of thuggery in the park at night. It’s not a call for increased police patrols or more surveillance cameras (though we are checking in with City Hall to ask them a few questions about the efficacy of Cal Anderson’s spy cams).
Instead, CHS is running this report because it sheds light on something we know happens in the park — people doing drugs — and describes the small drug bust with more detail than the average Seattle Police Department report. I’m ready for Mike with Curls to take me to task for covering another small crime. I’ll take the heat. These things happened on the Hill. The way they occurred is interesting to me and I’m here to report interesting stuff. I’m not here only to cover what the TV helicopter camera crews say is news. Also not here to glamorize the cops and bad guys thing — the details do a good job of making sure that won’t happen — but to understand a bit more about the culture and logistics behind an every-day drug bust in Cal Anderson Park. (Anybody know a better way to embed a PDF? Flickr slideshow is a pain — make sure to hit pause in bottom control bar)
The Parks Dept. Superintendent told Ross Reynolds on KUOW a few weeks ago that the police have not once used the surveillance cameras in Cal Anderson Park. I’ve read a draft copy of the City Auditor’s report on the camera pilot program which is due to be released this month. They were unable to determine if the cameras have had any effect.
I don’t see the document, just a black box. Can you provide a link to it?
I don’t think you’re going to be able to embed a PDF, and guess that you’ve embedded a Flash-based PDF viewer here. Maybe just converting the front page to an image and linking that to the PDF would suffice. ImageMagick or its derivative, GraphicsMagick, will do the conversion nicely, and ImageMagick Studio will let you do it without installing anything locally: upload your PDF, click “output” from the upper menu, choose PNG, click “output” below, then follow the link to the first image that results.
It’s a flickr slideshow of the docs followed by a link to a pdf (which both worked fine for me). I really liked the use of the flickr slideshow to view the docs easily.
Here’s a link to justin’s flickr account with photos of the docs.
Thanks, Linder.
In his incident report, Officer Brownlee wrote that as he and another officer finished citing someone for drinking alcohol in the park, he saw some other people look over at him a few times, then:
“I observed _____ and _____ gather some unseen objects in both of their hands and get into an unlocked white 1997 Jeep Cherokee SUV CO/_____. I believed these actions to be suspicious, and I rode over to the parked Jeep to investigate further.”
What could be considered suspicious about people in a park watching some cops doing cop stuff, then gathering up their things and getting in a vehicle? In the end, it turned out that they seem to have been doing things that they’re barred by law from doing, but that’s beside the point. If he thought they looked fishy and it’s acceptable to go question people who look fishy, then why write up the part about finding them gathering their things and leaving to be suspicious?
Must we all to avert our eyes and stay where we are whenever police are in the area in order to avoid raising their suspicion and setting ourselves up for hassle?
I have to say this site reports it all in detail….
But, really, it is small time stuff. In Seattle it seems all parks are subject to the who is undesirable test. In volunteer it has been too many gay men for decades, and in other places just too many un employed, too many that look scruffy, too many that might be drinking, too many, too many.
With the cops having so little to do, apparently, and the park so near the precinct, I hope Cal Anderson does no become the place always on edge cause a bunch of cops are always roaming around.
Lots of people in parks make them work. All kinds of people doing all kinds of lazy, relaxed stuff. Let cops go for the violent crime, and hassle drivers with traffic tickets so the city can make money.
The camera project is a waste of money. Watching people do what? Sleep, kiss, yell at the kids, eat something. Mundane trumps crime in most parks … that is why we go to them, comfort zones that extend our living spaces.
[AND, I did see the scattered crumbs on 15th as well (already posted) … can I send a pix?]
Someone should start a give the park big brother camera the finger project … then get a copy and put the images on Tube … public art from the publicly paid police cam.
tried to post as anon user but didn’t seem to take so i finally took the plunge and created an account :)
in any case, try using scribd. you can upload a doc and then embed it in a viewable format using auto-generated code:
http://www.scribd.com/tools/embed_simple
wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribd
good. yeah you don’t have to be a cop to notice people “acting suspicious” i see this shit all the time, I doubt it was because they were just climbing into a car and watching at the same time. why dissect this? I see so much scumaction I just wanna start carrying around a bag of water balloons and just start tagging dudes with belts around their arms. fuck’em. Sounds like the cops did a job here. As for more cameras, thats’ dumb. I say they just make it leagal to pelt junkies with balloons filled with piss.
obviously these guys weren’t just “people watching and leaving the park” Phil…
“Really” wrote:
“yeah you don’t have to be a cop to notice people “acting suspicious” i see this shit all the time, I doubt it was because they were just climbing into a car and watching at the same time.”
If not, then why did the police officer write so in his report? Like I wrote before, if he thought they looked fishy and it’s acceptable to go question people who look fishy, then why write up the part about finding them gathering their things and leaving to be suspicious? Just write, “I thought they looked fishy so I went over and questioned them.” From what (admittedly little) information is available to me here, I’d say the officer acted suspiciously like someone who did something he should not have.
“why dissect this?”
Because this is not a police state, and police are, for very good reasons related to our freedom, required to work within certain boundaries, not to simply do whatever it takes to get the job done as long as the ends justify the means. When one of them does something suspicious — like writing a somewhat bizarre report about the reportedly-suspicious nature of someone looking at him citing someone in a park, then picking up belongings and getting into a vehicle, and using this as justification for escalation of the situation — we have every reason to want to dissect what happened, regardless of whether the eventual outcome pleases us or not. This should raise our suspicion.
“I see so much scumaction I just wanna start carrying around a bag of water balloons and just start tagging dudes with belts around their arms. fuck’em.”
Although I wouldn’t put it the way you did, I’m not crazy about hard drug use in public parks, either, although it’s really the behavior that often surrounds such use that bothers me, not the drug use itself, and most of that bad behavior is already forbidden, so I’m more apt to support busting people for the other things than for choosing to chemically alter their states of mind. Our drug laws are woefully unjust, and I wouldn’t wish the effect of them on anyone. In this case, all the guy was observed to have done was lay on a blanket next to a hypodermic needle that contained heroin. That’s illegal, but not, in my mind, the slightest bit amoral. It’s a pity that we had to blow several hours of police time on dealing with it.
I wish adults who want to shoot up had a better place to do so. Safe injection sites work well in other cities, but admittedly don’t have the appeal of our beautiful park. I’d much prefer not to have the park be a place that people hang out and shoot heroin, but I’m not willing to look the other way while police side-step the boundaries within which they are required to operate in order to achieve that goal. I’m not saying that this is what happened, only that the situation as described in the officer’s own words sounds suspicious.
Cheesecake, that’s a straw-man. I didn’t write or imply that all these people were doing was people-watching in the park. Please re-read my comment if you thought otherwise.
meant immoral, though hanging out with a syringe is neither immoral nor amoral
You forgot one I see routinely near the playground…Watching people stick needles in their arm.
I say that based on the info the cop acted appropriately. I guess it is subject to interpretation. The cop probably used his best judgment.
I’m no expert on Constitutional law or on law enforcement, so I can’t say with any authority whether the cop acted appropriately. The actions describe lead me to believe that in my own opinion (not based specifically on what’s legal, just my gut reaction) he probably acted appropriately, and I think our Seattle Police act appropriately the vast majority of the time. And in the end, looking only at this specific incident and not at the bigger picture, most of us probably benefited from his actions (though not, of course, the guy who’s now tangled in our nasty drug war web). I’m not disputing any of that.
In his report, Officer Brownlee very specifically referred to watching police in a park then picking up belongings and leaving the park to get in a vehicle as suspicious behavior, and used that reportedly-suspicious behavior as justification for further action on his part. If he needed justification for further action (I don’t know) then it seems that he acted out of line, because citizens should not be treated with suspicion just because they observe police actions in public, then choose to pick up their things and leave. If he didn’t need such justification, then why did he go to the trouble of documenting it? If he didn’t need such justification, then it seems he could have — and likely would have — just written something like, “I saw some people who looked like trouble, so I went over and questioned them.”
Again: Must we all to avert our eyes and stay where we are whenever police are in the area in order to avoid raising their suspicion and setting ourselves up for hassle?