Today, now that the federal prosecutors have declined to file charges against one of the officers, the Seattle Police Department has released a sought-after dashcam video of a 2010 incident showing officers punching and kicking a man on the ground.
The video shows an unremarkable incident until the 4:50 mark, when an altercation gets underway on the opposite side of the red car. By the 6 minute mark, a woman can be heard crying out. A man wearing a blue shirt in the car gets out and approaches the officers. One of officers starts shoving him away, eventually bringing him around the front of the car and tripping him on to the ground. An officer comes over and kicks the man in the blue shirt. As he flails his arms, the officer who kicked him punches him in the face, while another officer knees him in the stomach, until he is turned onto his chest.
The Seattle Times' Steve Miletich reports on the context that evening:
Bauer was one of three officers who responded to a call on Nov. 4, 2010, outside a South Seattle bank, where physical confrontations erupted with four people who were working as an after-hours cleaning crew.
[Chief Kathleen] O’Toole was alerted to the video by city attorneys as they were preparing to release it as part of a bulk request for videos by KOMO-TV. The request resulted in a state Supreme Court ruling last year that the videos must be released, but the footage of the bank incident was withheld pending the criminal investigation.
A lawsuit stemming from the incident was filed in October 2013 by Eulogia Morales Cayetano and settled by the city for $25,000.
You can read that lawsuit, filed against Officers David Bauer, Brandon Eggers, and Lindsey Brown, right here. It includes this allegation: "Ms. Morales begged Officers Brown and Bauer to stop beating, shoving, and grabbing Emmanuel [her son] in Spanish, and, as a result, the officers began beating, shoving, and grabbing Ms. Morales." The entire family suffered injuries. Emmanuel was deported.
Morales was charged with a misdemeanor assault against Bauer and obstruction, but city prosecutors asked for the charges be dismissed, the Times reports. Last year, the city paid $195,000 to settle a separate federal lawsuit alleging that Bauer and four other cops used excessive force on five people at a party in South Seattle, "in which Bauer reportedly waded into a crowd swinging a garden shovel, gashing a man’s head," the Times notes. You can read that lawsuit here. It's a doozy.
Chief O'Toole, to her credit, asked the feds to investigate the incident in the video released today. They and King County prosecutors said there's insufficient evidence to bring charges against Bauer. But there's nothing stopping O'Toole from simply firing Bauer or any of the other officers involved if their conduct doesn't meet her standards, regardless of whether the police union will appeal.
Responding to a post on the department's website which talked up the progress made through Department of Justice-ordered reforms since 2010, Center for Open Policing co-founder Eric Rachner said, "You'll take the fruits of 'reform'—budget, gear, praise—but won't pay the only cost that really matters: Fire. Bad. Cops."
That's what King County Sheriff John Urquhart does.
