Well said, Chief.

Uh oh. Powerful ignorant people do *not* respond well to being called out on their ignorance.

Well that ought to put an end to any political grandstanding over the case.

I suppose it's a good thing that O'Toole doesn't seem to be a political animal, but holy cow that is not how you put out a PR fire.

There's a lot of things about city government that CM Sawant doesn't understand. I don't fault her for that, because it's a complicated beast. What I do fault her for is not bothering to learn them. If the policies are wrong, she is not going to be able to effectively correct them by not knowing anything about them. If they are right, but the justification behind them is unclear, all she is doing is making a bad situation worse.

But what specific SPD policies is Sawant ignorant about? Seems like a good bit of grandstanding from the chief herself.

Sawant is the last person that should be doing this.

Sawant definitely showing her ass on this one

Critical race theorists believe that the facts literally don't matter. The narrative is far more important to them.

Mike Brown got us "Hands Up, Don't Shoot," without even having to put his hands up.

The more evidence you pile on that Sawant is terrible, the worse it looks for everyone else letting her set the city's agenda.

Don't like what ignorant old Sawant says about you, Chief? Then fix your department, Kathleen. You're a pro at this, right? Who has all the power on the public safety committee? You do, Lorena, not Sawant. Sideline her, and fix the department. Kshama isn't stoping any of you adults in the room from doing your jobs.

None of the Democrats in the government have any intention of changing anything but the window dressing on the SPOG-approved process where, business as usual, the SPD investigates itself and, surprise, exonerates its officers. O'Toole can flounce off in a huff because mean Kshama Sawant hurt her cops' feelings, but you all know its true.

When all is said and done, the cop union has final veto power on anything that threatens the status quo. All these "countless hours" are theater for the public, making themselves look busy, pretending something is happening. Call her names, mansplain, whitesplain at her all you want, but Sawant is the only one who sees that.

Nothing is going to change.

@6 I suppose you are not aware that SPD is operating under consent decree. That's why O'Toole is the chief.

Standing ovation for the Chief. Sawant is an ignorant charlatan who never fails to exploit any tragedy for her own political gain. She just LOVES muscling her way in front of the cameras, and releasing her deluge of oral diarrhea on the citizens of Seattle.

"When all is said and done, the cop union has final veto power on anything that threatens the status quo. All these "countless hours" are theater for the public, making themselves look busy, pretending something is happening. Call her names, mansplain, whitesplain at her all you want, but Sawant is the only one who sees that."

I'll grant you, dear Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, that the unions - not just the SPOG - have the city over a barrel (full disclosure, I am a city employee and a union member) because of some misguided, old-timey perception that most city employees actually live in the city, and that the voters are sympathetic to them. The perpetuation of that myth is the political machine's fault.

But Sawant is just a wide, shallow river who does nothing to make herself more familiar with the mechanisms of city government, which in turn would make her much more effective in the role that she has chosen for herself. It's not mansplaining or whitesplaining to call her out for that, and I'd argue that you are making excuses for her. Being a (rhetorical) bomb thrower is all well and good, and there's certainly a role for that in elected officials, but they need to know how to effectively target those rhetorical bombs. Otherwise, it's just posing.

@10

So what specific SPD policies did the chief refer to that Sawant is ignorant about?

"Facts matter and pre-judgment of this incident by any of us would be completely irresponsible."

Are we sure this person is really the Seattle Police chief? Statements like this make me think she has never set foot in the city.

It's unfortunate that we have someone so oblivious as Chief of Police. In "calling out" Kshama Sawant's demand for an independent investigation, O'Toole herself has used the killing as a political tool to strike against an ideological position. Whether or not this shooting had happened, Sawant was always in favor of public oversight of the police. She has been since she was first elected. This is nothing new. The fact that she's calling for a public, third party investigation is a sign of consistency, not some sort of new "hysterical" behavior as some of the sexist commentators would have you believe, and certainly not a new issue to prop up another re-election campaign, as she isn't even running for anything. All of this also ignores the fact that any shooting like this is inherently politicized in the context of our current environment, considering every video we've seen of a person of color being gunned down and every corresponding not-guilty verdict delivered.

There's also a bit of comedy to this: The person who manages a bureaucracy based on structural violence and the oppression of minorities is calling out a minority activist for not using the same bureaucracy to address her complaints. That suuuure is surprising... O'Toole isn't offended by the "politicization" here - she's happy to take part in it. She's offended by the idea of the public she serves determining what is acceptable and what is not acceptable policing. She's offended by democratic oversight. Fuck off, O'Toole.

There is something seriously wrong with both SPD training & leadership. These kinds of events have been happening far too frequently. It is completely inexcusable that the officers didn't have proper non-lethal means available to them. Two officers vs. one upset woman with scissors should NOT EVER EQUAL DEATH. Too bad if our Chief doesn't like the well-deserved criticism!

@16 Lyles in fact survived the time she menaced officers with a scissors while claiming her daughter was a warewolf.

SPD/Chief O'Toole spending long hours with Charleena Lyles' family doesn't mean anything. What possible solace can SPD provide? They can't provide justice for her killing. They won't say that they were responsible for her death. There is no official independent oversight group that's going to provide justice. Chief O'Toole is just throwing hard words at Councilmember Sawant to throw the focus off SPD's wrongdoing.

Me making excuses for her, dear?

What if I was making excuses for Sawant? Would it matter? Who cares?

But what if O'Toole, Gonzales, and the rest of the political establishment are using Sawant as a distraction to avoid talking about their failure to change the status quo at the SPD? You should care.

If the Chief were actually accomplishing anything with her long hours of whatever the fuck she's doing, wouldn't she be so engrossed in that great enterprise that she'd not have five minutes to reply to what the non-chair of the public safety committee has to say?

Sawant's letter made no headlines. It was O'Toole's drama queen reply that has created a circus. She's been serving city governments for decades. She knows exactly what the media does when a city appointee takes that snippy tone with an elected official.

O'Toole has made this about Sawant, when it should be about the SPD. And about Charleena Lyle. But the Chief saw a political opening to change the narrative and find a new shiny object for the media to chase. All to keep the cops sitting tight, comfy, safe and secure from change, or accountability.

Who gives a shit who I make excuses for? Pay attention to our failing leaders making excuses for themselves and waving red meat for the Sawant haters.

That's a problem. That's a big deal.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn dear, who gave the Chief the opening to make it about CM Sawant?

That's the problem, and that's the big deal. Political grandstanding means nothing if you have nothing to back it up, and CM has nothing to back it up.

@6/13 - It isn't that a specific thing is prohobited by the consent decree, it is that the consent decree requires SPD to follow a specific proceedure, so that is the proceedure they are mandated to follow. They can't unilaterally change the process to something else.

But that is just SPD's internal investigation, which is, essentially, an employment issue. It doesn't bind state or federal prosecutors, who are free to do their own criminal investigation. It also doesn't prevent the City from doing an independent investigation (although that also wouldn't be binding on prosecutors, obviously, and it couldn't be the basis for an employment decision, per the consent decree and union contracts).

Charleena's family was at the hearing and was wondering where Chief O'Toole was.

@21: Ctrl-V comes in handy sometimes.

@22

Thank you.

@14 and @15 Agreed!

Saying it is pre-emptive to judge when a newly released Stanford study of millions of police traffic stops nationwide SHOWED bias toward people of color, amongst many local examples...just, wow.

Even if we are better at being less biased in WA, we are not a post-racial society. What this really means is you are innocent until proven guilty while light skinned or wearing blue, and guilty until proven innocent if not. This rings JUST like the Fairfax police response to a motorist bludgeoning, kidnapping and dumping the body of a Muslim teenage girl, then calling it ROAD RAGE and denying repeatedly that it could be a hate crime. Implicit bias in investigating anyone? (https://fcpdnews.wordpress.com/2017/06/1…)

Chief O'Toole: YOUR COMMUNITY - locally and nationally - has told you REPEATEDLY that there is a problem. Your guild has met with Not This Time about police reform and endorsed the initiative going to our ballots. This incident did not happen in a vacuum. You can't look for motive in a crime like this that doesn't address our norms. Society said killing her was okay to do. Just google "police not charged for killing" and pages of examples come up, with Philando Castillo's shooter's acquittal as a recent one.

The Chief is sadly living out her role in our racist system - offended white woman that does not understand institutional racism and blames people of color. As the Chief of the Seattle Police Dept, she needs to understand THAT complexity.

While Kshama Sawant may be ignorant of the minutia in police policy, Katherine O'Toole has shown her ignorance of instituional racism, internalized racial superiority, and victim shaming with her response. In this case women of color and men of color are the victims - and we can't stand to admit that our white system of oppression, of which she is part, is the aggressor. O'Toole may have the book memorized, but she has shown she is out of her depth in regard to healing racial divides and changing bias in our community.

Leave it to Kshama Sawant to make a signficant portion of Seattle feel sympathy for someone like Kathleen O'Tool.

Im glad there are folks like Sawant broadening the spectrum of political discourse, BUT this is embarrassing. As a council member, she should know something about the agreements governing the police and the intersection of council policy with federal and union obligations, if we're supposed to take her seriously. This is not as bad as Trump, but the comparison is fair.

Would it be against SPD policy for Chief O'Toole to have simply been present to listen and show solidarity with the family and community, to answer any questions that wouldn't have compromised the investigation, and to decline to answer questions that would have. By the way, there were about seven of Charleena's family members there including Charleena's father and grandfather. This wasn't just Sawant asking for this.

This would be an angry mob scream-fest if the Chief attended this event. Would purpose would it serve other than giving a target for the anger. With the media freely quoting people calling this murder, and even government officials calling for "justice," implying that the policemen are guilty of murder, what would be accomplished? From listening to the tapes and reading the description of events from the two cops, there is certainly a possibility that they reacted within the bounds of protecting themselves. Is this tragic? Obviously. Should our community's anger be focused on mental health reform? I think so. When you continuously put the police in the position of drug counselor, mental health professional and family dispute negotiator, bad stuff like this is going to happen. Let's take some of this stuff off their plate. They are too easily a target here for grandstanding politicians, and of course grieving families are too easily used by these same politicians.

Model police agency? HA HA HA HA.

O'Toole is delusional.

There are many concise comments here. It's just not what so many on this post want to hear. It doesn't fit their perception of Police. I am a Detective's wife. I am never sure my husband is coming home each night after work. These people are so worried about a racist trigger happy cop, as if they all are. That's their focus. I'm worried about the trigger happy person of any color waiting for my husband with a loaded gun. There are many dead cops to prove that theory. What happens if a cop is murdered? Barely a brief mention on the news, maybe a one time paragraph in the paper. Where's the riots, the protests, the non stop media coverage? Where's all the money hungry lawyers grandstanding in front of the TV cameras yelling for justice?
What is the Officer's family left with? NOTHING BUT THEIR GRIEF. Where's the money that makes people like the parents of Michael Brown Millionaires, along with so many criminal "victim's" families that the media has chosen to glorify.
Where were the wives of the slain Police Officers up on stage at Hilary Clinton's Democratic National Convention? Not there. Not millionaires. Ignored, forgotten. The media could care less. Shameful is an understatement...

EGrace dear, I think you're being a bit forgetful to make a point. Every time a law enforcement officer is killed in the line of duty, we have huge, multi-day events to remember them. Officer Brenton's funeral was massive, and the memorials for the four Lakewood officers who were killed was even more impressive. And the widows and children are well taken care of by the municipalities that their loved one served. As for the whole Trump convention circus, I don't know why a widow of a slain officer would want to be used for a cynical political purpose, but to each his own.

I think the thing that is always missing from these discussions is that we are not paying enough attention to the mental health of the police. Many of them come from the military, where they may have unresolved issues, and just the nature of police work is so raw and difficult that I think it would be easy for even someone who started with good intentions to become somewhat twisted. Add to that the established fact that police officers tend to have higher incidents of addiction and domestic violence issues, and that we tend to both vilify and fetishize them, and we have a population that is in need of extra attention.

Lastly it could be that the combination of the "thin blue wall" and macho culture of the police forces are keeping good cops from speaking out about bad cops. Maybe the good cops are as frightened of the bad cops as a lot of civilians are. Look at that cop who killed his ex-wife and himself in front of their kids in Tacoma awhile back. There were officers who tried to speak up about him, and they lost their jobs.

I have no idea if police officers are subject to regular mental health examinations. If they aren't we need to start. If they are, we need to look at what we're doing in that area, because it's not working. There's too many cops who are being caught doing awful things to say otherwise (although in the instance of the death of Ms. Lyles, I don't think it was the police per se. I think it was our insistence as a society that police be social workers and de facto mental health professionals, which is not their purpose)

Dearest Ms Vel-DuRay, how nice to sse you again. It seems to me that even a police officer who starts out sane and bright and with the greatest intentions to protect and to serve will over time being exposed to the things that police officers are exposed to become very cold emotionally, they lose whatever empathy they had. As to stress, I work for a flying squadron at McChord Field, JBLM, and we have regular "mental health" days where people from the Mental Health Clinc come down and spend the day with us...

Catalina,
First of all, I am not, and never will be a Trump supporter. Your assumption there is wrong. I'm a Liberal Democrat, and so is my husband. I stated the fact about Hilary Clinton to make a point. The unfair glorification pronounced on those who deserved it the least.
No widows or family of police officer's are well taken care of. They receive an insurance policy. No one is made a millionaire. They lose their loved one, as well as their income.
Apparently you don't listen to the daily news or do much reading, you'd see the almost daily one paragraph or brief mention about Law Enforcement officers being shot and/or murdered on a very frequent basis. Perhaps you missed the two officers shot today, one mortally injured after a "routine" traffic stop.
Yes, these officers have all had intense psychological evaluations at the time of interviewing. They have ongoing counseling as needed.
No, none of those officers who spoke up about the Chief who killed his wife lost their job. Your information is incorrect.
Yes, Officer Breton's funeral was well attended, which was a heartfelt response by many in Tacoma. However, it did not make the news all across the US, was not a major discussion on any talk shows. Unlike Ms. Lyles tragic death, when officers are killed, it mainly stays local, and they happen far more often than you would ever know. Their deaths do not sell enough papers, or provide grandstanding politicians, lawyers and others who want a piece of the publicity for their own needs enough grandeur. I think I'd be correct in my assumption a Police Officer death is not going to get you on your keyboard anytime soon...

EGrace dear, did I ever say you were a Trump supporter? No.

Municipal law enforcement officers families receive a pension and an insurance payout. What more do you want?

Do you think we need some sort of cable network that is all police deaths, all the time? I really don't get you point there either.

I think you make my point for me that if we are doing psychological evaluations and frequent checkups, we're doing it wrong, because it seems like there's an awful lot of psycho cops out there. Or do you think shooting people who are running away is just good police tactics?

And while you seem to think of yourself as some sort of expert because you're supposedly married to a cop, I can tell you that at least one person was forced out of a job with the Tacoma PD in the wake of Chief Brame's death.

I am not unsympathetic to the police. I think they have one of the most difficult jobs out there. After all, no one calls the cops when they're happy. But I'm not about to fetishize them either. They are government employees and they need to be held accountable for their actions. And no one drafted them into law enforcement. You can stack your body count up against the innocent victim's body count until the cows come home, but it doesn't matter. It's comparing apples to oranges.

Lastly, if you don't think politicians - and especially conservative politicians - don't make a huge deal out of a cop's death, I don't know what planet you live on.