Seattle Police Department drowning in corruption and lawlessness

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SmarterthanYou

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cop threatens to make stuff up after arresting two innocent men

A Seattle police officer has been caught on tape talking about "making up" evidence while two wrongly arrested men sit in jail. It's the latest shocker uncovered by a KOMO 4 Problem Solver investigation into the Seattle Police Department's vanishing dashcam videos.

Josh Lawson and Christopher Franklin filed a claim against the city Monday for excessive force and wrongful arrest.

The two were arrested at gunpoint on November 16, 2010 and said the incident changed their lives forever.

"I thought I was gonna die," Lawson said about that night.

Franklin said it was "the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced."

Both men said they suffered facial bruises and swelling after one was kicked and the other man-handled into the pavement while being arrested. But then listen to what an officer says on an audio recording after he takes the two to holding cells: "Well, you're going to jail for robbery that's all."

You then hear Franklin ask, "for robbery?" And the officer responds, "Yeah, I'm gonna make stuff up."

We showed Seattle Police Sergeant Sean Whitcomb the arrest video, and he admits the 'make stuff up' comment was inappropriate. But he says the department's Office of Professional Accountability investigated the complaint and exonerated the officer.

"I can tell you we take (complaints) seriously but people have to believe that and they have to trust the system they have to trust the process," Whitcomb said.

Yeah, right. I don't think so.

Another problem: none of the arrest is caught on tape -- only the aftermath, once the two are on the ground in handcuffs, with Lawson's angry questions of why Officer Richardson kicked him in the face, which Richardson disputes saying he only "kicked him in the chest."

For more than a year the KOMO 4 Problem Solvers fought to get access to the Seattle Police Department's video database, knowing that dash cam videos could play a critical role in citizen oversight of the troubled department. We are now suing SPD for what we believe is a violation of the Public Records Act. Our investigation uncovered, among other things, that the department had lost tens of thousands of dash cam videos.

Attorney Padula contacted us, wondering if her clients were among that group.

"It wasn't really until I was able to communicate with you and your knowledge of what's out there and what the videos mean and your investigation that it was like 'oh, wait, there's not just one video that we don't get - there's more.'"

We discovered at least three other dash cam videos exist of the Lawson/Franklin arrest. But none show Officer Richardson during the critical time period, when he had Lawson and Franklin at gunpoint and later kicked Lawson.

We asked Whitcomb if the department was going to hold officers accountable when dashboard cameras aren't turned on.

"We do, we actually do, look at our OPA reports," Whitcomb said. But when we reminded him it didn't happen in this case, he said, "well maybe not in that case, but there's other cases."

Attorney Padula's take on the lack of dash cam video? "I think it's reprehensible, to me there's no excuse for that."

We've learned that the arrest video could have been salvaged from the hard drive in Officer Richardson's dash cam system, but wasn't.
 
Well, just keep filing massive lawsuits against the city, and eventually they might discover that its cheaper just to tar-and-feather these guys, and fire them as well. We are kind of hurt for cash right now, after all.
 
and in another seattle case, where 'shockingly' the dashcam video was saved, SPD tries to get a guy fired from his job by showing the dashcam video of guys traffic stop to his boss.

http://www.komonews.com/news/proble...r-disclosure-of-dash-cam-video-139422678.html

For the past year the KOMO 4 Problem Solvers have uncovered case after case of questionable conduct by Seattle Police Officers caught on tape. Now we've found a chilling case that started as a simple traffic stop that could happen to any one of us. Only this time the dash cam video of the incident was shown to a man's boss, jeopardizing his very livelihood.

Most people who know Keiwuan Miller see him as either the assistant high school basketball coach or as a security officer at a local public high school. But on an April day in 2010, drivers could have seen him along the side of a city street, stopped by Seattle police for allegedly not wearing his seat belt.

Miller, who has absolutely no criminal history, says he's been stopped by police time and time again simply because of the color of his skin. And every time he's stopped, "it brings back the first time, the second time, when I was a teenager, when I was 22, It brings all those times back."

As a result, Miller says he suffers from anxiety attacks, which prompted him to get out of his car while waiting for Officer Mary Ann Unger to write a ticket.

On the police dash cam video of his traffic stop you hear Officer Unger telling Miller he needs to get back in his car. Miller is clearly agitated, but never threatens or moves towards the officers. He does try to explain why he can't get back in his car.

"I told her, I'll tell you the same thing, I have anxiety issues," he said.

It didn't help that as a security guard he was carrying a rifle shell that a teacher had found at school the day before. That also put police on alert. Miller says he tried to explain all that and the officers knew he worked school security.

"I told her the bullet was in my wallet because I was taking it back to school" where it had to be logged into records, Miller said.

But when another officer shows up with a drawn gun -- and then a third and a fourth officer, Miller tells us, "this is ridiculous, this is over the top. There's no reason for you to pull your gun out."
 
well this is pretty unbelievable.

a dozen seattle police officers perform felony stop on same two individuals shortly after KOMO news story airs about original stop

But six days after the KOMO News story aired in February, Lawson and Franklin had another run-in with police. Lawson was reportedly driving a car registered to him. Franklin and three others were riding with him when they were stopped by police at gunpoint. Both men say 10 to 12 police officers handcuffed all five.

"It was unreal. It was frightening," said Lawson.

"These young people were pulled over again, at gunpoint, car searched, harassed and humiliated," said James Bible, president of the local NAACP chapter.

After more than an hour, police released them without citing any tickets. No charges stemmed from the incident,

Lawson and Franklin say they have asked SPD for videos and reports from that night, but say they have received nothing. And after trying to get public records from SPD the first time around, they're not waiting.

"It wasn't until KOMO 4 put their weight behind us and we started interacting directly with one of the city attorneys that we were, all of a sudden, we were getting things that when I did the initial request we weren't getting," said attorney Lizanne Padula.

Seattle police declined to comment as the two men have filed a claim in connection to the first traffic stop. But late Monday, police released a street check report, which they claimed shows proper police procedure was used during the second traffic stop.

But the men and their lawyers still have questions. They say without the police records this time, they can't tell if the police were malicious or just doing their job.
 
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