Without any request for comment, Mayor Mike McGinn sent a strongly worded statement this evening about my recent allegations of police misconduct. In an incident involving city and county police, SPD Officer John Marion escalated a normal exchange into a threat to “bother” me at my work. As I wrote earlier today, I think the Seattle police chief was wrong to mischaracterize the officer’s menacing comments simply as “rudeness.” Take it away, McGinn:
I’ve been following this issue with concern. The SPD manual requires that our officers will “be professional and courteous at all times.” While I cannot comment on an active investigation, generally speaking, threatening and intimidating behavior, including threats of harassment, are not professional or courteous and are unacceptable in our police department.
We are training our officers in LEED—Listen and Explain with Equity and Dignity—so that officers will carry out the standard in the manual and de-escalate situations. We are working with the monitor and the police department to implement the Settlement Agreement. We will examine ways to further strengthen de-escalation policies and training. For now, our manual and our OPA review process give us tools to hold our officers accountable to our professional and courtesy standards. I will be following this matter closely to determine whether the department has taken to heart the changes the public wants to see.
It’s nice to see the mayor take a clear stance on this. As the city’s commander in chief, who has made mistakes with a troubled police force (to be fair, a police force that had troubles long before he arrived), McGinn is distinguishing what will and won’t be tolerated by our cops. Still, I wish more complaints about misconduct got this much attention—because I’m sure some police officers talk to civilians in Seattle this way all the time, usually people of color and the homeless, and the chief doesn’t issue a statement, the mayor says nothing, and it passes without a peep in the press.
In the last couple days, the Seattle Police Department has been heaped with scorn (especially on Facebook and Twitter). I don’t want to let Officer Marion off the hook—I contend he was harassing and intimidating me. But my most serious complaints concern a county police officer who threatened to arrest me for taking photos in public. I argued in a complaint filed today that King County Sheriff’s Office Sergeant Patrick “K.C.” Saulet stopped me without cause, in what I believe was an illegal stop, with the singular intent of suppressing my constitutional right to observe activities in public. That’s worse than what the SPD officer did. I don’t expect the King County Sheriff or King County Executive to issue statements, but it is damn nice see Seattle leaders proactively condemn misconduct.