I’m back from vacation, and damn I picked a bad week to be gone. The City settled a major lawsuit over the 2020 protests, decided to prosecute someone for defending the homeless, and the Office of Police Accountability found the Seattle police union vice president, Officer Daniel Auderer, violated policy when he laughed about his fellow Officer, Kevin Dave, striking and killing Jaahnavi Kandula, who died about a year ago this week. I’m going to a conspiracy party this weekend and dressing as the freaks who schedule press releases based on my PTO requests. Anyway, let’s dive into a couple of these.
City settles lawsuit filed by the protesters who cops gassed and sent to the hospital over multiple weeks during the demonstrations over George Floyd’s murder. In the largest case to come out of the 2020 protests, more than 50 people sued the City over their resulting injuries, including “permanent hearing loss, broken bones, concussions, wounds, bruising, and emotional damage including PTSD,” according to the Stritmatter Firm, who represented the plaintiffs. Attorney Karen Koehler pointed out that while the City settled for $10 million, it spent about $30 million fighting the lawsuit. The City’s response to the settlement, including City Attorney Ann Davison’s comment basically saying she’s ready to move on, really irked Koehler and the plaintiffs, who thought the payout would result in some contrition on the part of the City.
Attorney Karen Koehler, in the pink, introduces one of the plaintiffs, John, who’s cane was considered a weapon by Seattle Police Department, allowing cops to attack him, Koehler says pic.twitter.com/Eryw4YcHKz
— Ashley Nerbovig (@AshleyNerbovig) January 25, 2024
I spoke with one of the plaintiffs, Abie Ekenezar, a Black veteran and mother to a now 22-year-old son, who said she went out to protest in 2020 to try and make the country safer for herself and her son. The response from police made her fear for her life and her friends’ lives. In suing the City, she wanted to force them to reckon with the actions of the Seattle Police Department (SPD) during that time. After the City’s statements, she worried that the City hasn’t learned from 2020, and that future protests may be met with the same aggressive response from SPD. However, she had no regrets about settling the lawsuit, saying that after three years many of her fellow plaintiffs felt exhausted and traumatized. She also said she’d keep showing up for future protests.
However, another plaintiff I spoke to who skipped the press conference and asked not to be named said they viewed the settlement as nothing compared to what the cops took from them during the protest, and they would have liked to see the case go to trial. “I don’t know anyone who was regularly on the ground who is OK three-and-a-half years later,” they said.
Meanwhile, the City Attorney’s office seems intent on wasting more money and throwing the book at more protesters. I plan on covering a trial today in municipal court where Davison’s office is prosecuting a Stop the Sweeps protester on a misdemeanor obstruction charge for allegedly trying to prevent SPD from towing another person’s RV while the person waited on a spare tire. The trial should wrap up today, but a a two-day trial over a guy standing on an RV for 12 minutes seems like a wild waste of City resources.
Amazon Ring takes less cozy approach to cops: Ring announced yesterday it planned to stop allowing cops to “mass-request footage” through the Neighbors app, which allowed cops to request footage from users in a specific area, bypassing search warrants. On some occasions, Ring turned over camera footage to police without notifying users, according to the Associated Press. Still, Fight for the Future Director Evan Greer said Ring still massively expands the surveillance state, and that government needs to step in to prevent “private surveillance partnerships” from violating people’s civil liberties and privacy.
Amazon also promises no new delivery fee: DoorDash, Uber, and Instacart embarrassed themselves by implementing new fees in Seattle after a City ordinance forced them to pay their drivers a living wage. But Amazon made the savvy choice to undercut these nerds by coming out and saying it won’t add a fee to their Amazon Flex delivery service, according to KING 5. Sucks to suck, DorkDash, Ugher, and Instafart.
Taylor Swift is a cop: New York Police Department Officers arrested a Seattle man after he allegedly hung around outside Swift’s home in New York for about four days, despite security personal asking the man to leave and not return, according to KOMO. A New York District Attorney charged the man with stalking and harassment. The man appeared to be “emotionally disturbed.”
Controversial nitrogen execution to move forward: Unless the US Supreme Court steps in, Alabama plans to kill a man tonight using nitrogen gas, suffocating him to death, according to the Associated Press. No state has tested this method of execution before.
Trans people trapped in Florida prisons unable to access care: Florida banned the use of state funds to pay for “sex-reassignment prescriptions or procedures.” Afterwards, according to the Marshall Project, more than 20 women in Florida prisons said their care abruptly changed.
Safe Word by serpentwithfeet: Some chill music for your morning commute. Stay dry, find your safe place.
cops worsen budget problems then get rewarded with more taxpayer money and hiring freeze exemptions.
hell of a system. i feel safer already
@1 I know right? If I cost my boss $10M plus $30M in legal fees, I’m pretty sure I’d get fired.
cops’ pensions
don’t pay for
cop’s malf-
easances?
Whose
‘brilliant’
idea was this?
I would love to know how Ashley would respond if an “emotionally disturbed” man “hung around” outside her home for four days, engaging in stalking and harassing behavior. ‘I just need to leave him alone, because otherwise ACAB will include me.’
Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd far from Seattle. While protests in other parts of Seattle went quietly, Capitol Hill protesters ignored the obvious public-health risk of spreading COVID, packed themselves tightly into Capitol Hill’s narrow streets, and fought with the cops. Now they’re butthurt everyone else just wants to move on.
The whole wide world doesn’t revolve around you, dears. Please consider that the next time someone tells you of a brilliant idea to block I-5 because whatever.
REI laid off a bunch of people today. Almost 400 employees.
re: Taylor Swift Is A Cop, the 911 calls were made by a neighbor & by swift’s security personnel. it appears that swift wasn’t even home that day; she was in buffalo. so all a woman has to do to be called a cop is be targeted by a stalker? i’m not carrying water for swift here, i can’t fucking stand her music, but come on.
Trans people trapped in Florida prisons…
Put another, more accurate way, Convicted criminals serving their sentences in Florida prisons.
@6 You can fire a public employee for cause if you want to. You just have to actually do the work. And police departments (and incidentally, mediators) all over have shown that they’re not particularly interested in doing that work. Not necessarily related to this specific incident, there are a small number of cops who repeatedly violate use of force policies and cost their departments large sums of money in lawsuits. Those cops are rarely fired, even when use of force reviews showed that they were in the wrong.
@7 Hey, progress! You at least admit that the IDF can be prosecuted for war crimes for shelling a UN compound! We’ll see what the UNRWA is willing to testify to, and what comes of the ICC ruling tomorrow.
we won’t Know
if it’s Genocide
till all the Facts
are in or all the
Gazans GONE.
whichever
comes 1st.
@1-3: The city and plaintiffs settled with no admission of wrongdoing by the city. This is not an obscure point the Stranger buried; in fact, the plaintiffs’ and their attorney whining about it is a major focus of the Stranger’s coverage:
“The City’s response to the settlement, including City Attorney Ann Davison’s comment basically saying she’s ready to move on, really irked Koehler and the plaintiffs, who thought the payout would result in some contrition on the part of the City.”
Given the plaintiffs settled for no admission of wrongdoing, why do you assume wrongdoing on the part of the city?
While I hate to interrupt such a thorough fellating, it’s not like the policies, regulations and laws protecting violent or biased cops are natural or immutable; hell, if it’s truly about good labor practices (rather than perpetuating oppressive policing), we could simply roll municipal sanitation into the department, and simply transfer garbage cops to garbage trucks.
Apparently the Stranger hasn’t met a law it doesn’t dislike – just like Trump. When people complain about “the left” this is why. Taylor Swift is a cop because her security called the police to report a stalker? Jesus, what fucking morally bankrupt take.
@16 Um, doing the work includes imposing progressive punishment leading to a dismissal. It’s possible in government agencies from local to federal–it just involves some work in documenting problems, putting the person on whatever the equivalent of a PIP is, and then firing them if they keep being a screwup. For reference, my younger kid’s second grade teacher was removed within a day for taking the class outside the fence (but not across a street) without getting a field trip approved. That was the final straw in a series of issues. If that’s possible for public school teachers, something similar is possible under federal law, the Constitution, etc. for police officers.
@20: in this particular case, the plaintiffs settled for no admission of wrongdoing by the city, so this case provides no basis for any “progressive punishment.”
speaking of XTwttr
nyt:
Elon Musk
Is Spreading Election Mis-
information, but X’s Fact Checkers Are Long Gone*
Civil rights lawyers and Democrats are sounding alarms about Mr. Musk’s claims about voting. The Biden campaign called his posts “profoundly irresponsible.”
In the spring of 2020, when President Donald J. Trump wrote messages on Twitter warning that increased reliance on mail-in ballots would lead to a “rigged election,” the platform ran a corrective, debunking his claims.
“Get the facts about mail-in voting,” a content label read. “Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud,” the hyperlinked article declared.
This month, Elon Musk, who has since bought Twitter and rebranded it X, echoed several of Mr. Trump’s claims about the American voting system, putting forth distorted and false notions that American elections were wide open for fraud and illegal voting by noncitizens.
This time, there were no fact checks. And the X algorithm — under Mr. Musk’s direct control — helped the posts reach large audiences, in some cases drawing many millions of views.
Since taking control of the site, Mr. Musk has dismantled the platform’s system for flagging false election content, arguing it amounted to election interference.
–by Jim Rutenberg & Kate Conger; Jan. 25, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/25/us/politics/elon-musk-election-misinformation-x-twitter.html
“election interference”?
that Orwellian motherfucker.
X: the
Cesspool
where Amer-
ica goes to Die.
*they Musta
Checked out
when FOX’s
facts-check-
ers fled the
Building.
@11 “: Well, what other taxpayer funded job is subject to relentless litigation, overwhelming hostility,”
just this one. you knnow why? because here are myriad legitimate reasons for it.
like I’d ever fucking call the cops if I got robbed. why would I want two problems? i’m capable of handling myself.
not a ‘threat’:
a Promise
Liz Cheney
says Nikki Haley
should stay in G.O.P.
primary through Super Tuesday.
Former Representative Liz Cheney urged Nikki Haley to stay in the Republican primary race through Super Tuesday in an episode of “Pod Save America” that will be released on Friday.
Ms. Cheney, an outspoken critic of former President Donald J. Trump, called his candidacy an “existential threat” to the nation and commended Ms. Haley for running against him, despite her long odds.
“We need to make sure that we’re challenging him and working to defeat him at every step of the way. And right now, Nikki Haley is in this fight, and I think she ought to stay in it,” Ms. Cheney said, according to a transcript of the interview shared with The New York Times.
–by Alyce McFadden
Haley’s
super PAC
says it raised
$50.1 million, eclipsing Trump.
The main super PAC backing Nikki Haley said Thursday that it had raised $50.1 million in the second half of 2023, a hefty sum that eclipses the amount brought in by the leading super PAC backing former President Donald J. Trump.
–by Rebecca Davis O’Brien and Jonathan Swan
Trump
says that
Haley donors will be
‘permanently barred from the MAGA camp.’
Former President Donald J. Trump essentially threatened Nikki Haley’s donors with excommunication from his political movement on Wednesday night, declaring that he would refuse contributions from anyone who donated to her primary campaign.
–by Maggie Astor
more, stunningly
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/25/us/trump-haley-2024-election
Wow
Donny two-times
91 felony charges later
now
that’s
Confidence
may your
Hubris sink
your Lifeboats
and sharks
scatter you
from here to
Kingdom Come
MAGAphorically.
@26 goddamnit right! a few people have found out the hard way
@12: I would expect that the department of corrections would be responsible to maintain any pre-existing prescribed drugs and treatments underway. But once they get thrown in the slammer, figuring that they are owed reassignment surgery on the states nickel? Sorry. You wait until you are released.
I got teargassed by SPD in front of my apartment during WTO and didn’t get shit.
@31 Haha, while in the Army, I ran troops through the CS gas chamber so they would gain confidence in their protective equipment. We all survived.
Former stalker supports stalker of Taylor Swift – keep it classy Stranger.
@27 – Haley should stay in the primaries until hell freezes over. The longer she stays in the more $$ Trump has to extort from the rubes to pay his campaign costs. Money spent on the primaries is money that they won’t be able to donate to him for the general.
Every time I accidentally read some of Kristifarians drivel it pushes me further to the right which is hard for me because I’m center left. No one counters you because the way you write is ridiculous. Go have a beer somewhere and actually talk to another human being. It’d be good for you.
“No
one counters
you because the
way you write is ridiculous.”
nice non-counter
counter but
‘center left’ in USA
is hard “Right”
in Europe*
subby
but blame my*
‘unreadable drivel’ for
All of Your shortcomings.
*so damn many “SOCIALISTS”!
so Few fascists! what’s a bor-
ing counternarrativist to
DO? Scandinavia — the
Happiest peeps on
Planet Earth.
why.
Why.
WHY?
*don’t forget
to Blame
Chas
too!
@37
being “nice” to
Hitler’s what brought
about WWII & brought
down Germany & killed
6 MILLLION Jews dewey.
You wanna Appease
Nazis? I did Not
see That one
coming!
Fasciis cum Nazis
Will burst your
adorable little
bubble of
Naïveté
dewey
and likely Not
in a Good way.
and
oddly
enough
Hamas can
NOT be Guilty
of “genocide” it
Ain’t a State. poof.