A citizen’s review of police shootings (.pdf) in 2008 and 2009 criticizes current trends for firearm discharge in the Seattle Police Department, urging stricter enforcement of departmental policy and more public oversight.
The report of the Firearms Review Board, the internal SPD group that investigates shootings by police, was released in July and was supposed to be reviewed by the City Council’s Public Safety and Education Committee last Wednesday, but was canceled by Council Member Tim Burgess because the primary citizen observer Rebecca J. Roe wasn’t present to report the findings at the meeting.
The report scrutinizes incidents where Seattle police officers shot civilians. It also asseses the mechanism used by SPD to investigate these shootings, providing recommendations that could alter how the department carries out these assessments in the future.
In her report, Roe specifically questions officers’ shooting at moving vehicles, which is against departmental policy expect in limited situations, and cites a violation.
Roe said in her report that the FRB seemed less likely to scrutinize officers’ reasons for shooting or ask them if they had considered other alternatives. She said that panel members were not checking to see if officer shootings were in compliance with policy.
Roe, a former senior deputy prosecutor in the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, also writes that although the “camaraderie” between officers was understandable, it could destroy effective oversight by the FRB. Roe called for additional citizen observers to be present during FRB meetings to ensure that the FRB simply doesn’t “rubber stamp officers’ actions.”
The review is particularly relevant in light of the fatal police shooting of Native American wood carver John T. Williams, which led to community members demanding a review of SPD’s firearms discharge policy. Protestors at the meeting told council members that they were “shocked, appalled, and dismayed” by the way an officer had gunned down a man who, they said, could have hardly posed a threat. Williams’s niece asked the committee why he had been killed “over a piece of wood and a 3-inch knife.” “You killed someone sitting in a corner carving a piece of culture,” she said. “Will you do the same to me?”
In an August 30 letter, Police Chief John Diaz agreed with Roe’s procedural recommendations, but added that they are subject to approval by the Seattle Police Officers Guild.
Impact this will have on the SPD: zero.
Weight this will give the Council or Mayor to enact binding oversight: zero.
Power the SPD and guild carry to set policy and outcomes remains: total.
Any city where the Mayor and Council or related elected officials AND the public at large don’t have maximum authority and oversight over the police is a broken city. The SPD does a good job, but it’s not their right to set policy and outcomes on their own affairs or the law in general.
Joe’s right.
Nothing will happen. The fix is already in.
Until the Council actually demand an OPA be staffed by civilians and have actual powers, nothing will change.
Period.
It is a cryin shame that a Native can’t carve a cultural art piece to sell without being killed by a public servant.Did I say public servant ? What hath God wrought? We are a true police state when it comes to the cops killing people on the street cause they say they feel threatend? “Cop with gun scared of Indian man with 3 inch blade”. Kinda like the wounded knee massacre all over again. I mean we had injust murders on a grand scale in 1898 now we are killing Indians on the streets in the City of Seattle. Mabe this cop saw too many cowboys and indians movies and he reacted to this perceived threat like in the movies? Just shoot em dead. Mabe the old adage of “the only good indian; is a dead indian” is still alive and well within the Seattle Police Department.