Seattle Police apparently have an audio recording of the entire encounter between officers and Shane Becker inside of the downtown REI on May 9th.

Seattle Police Officers’ Guild Rich O’Neill says the tape—which won’t be publicly available until after the Office of Professional Accountability completes its investigation—proves the officers were in line with SPD policies and will likely end the debate over whether REI security staff asked police to remove Becker from the store.

I’m also working on getting a copy of the 911 call to find out who reported the incident to police.

Jonah Spangenthal-Lee: Proving you wrong since 1983.

18 replies on “More on the REI/Loomis/SPD Debacle”

  1. This is way less of a controversy than you are writing it up to be.

    Hey I guess every little guy needs their Deep Throat, amirite Jonah?

  2. @1 I’d much rather read about this than the drivel seattletimes.com has on it’s local page. top two stories?

    ‘Urban Phantom’ (which contains links to a PDF of bear sightings in Seattle) and ‘SUV rams Burger King’ (video of it happening!)

    At least this has some ramifications regarding the way citizens, police and security personnel interact.

  3. @1 says after the tapes are discovered that show that this is way less controversy blah blah blah …

    @2 I agree with you.

  6. So – how do the police have this recording? Is it now standard practice for the police to have an audio recorder running?

  8. One thing we all know is not going to be on that tape is REI or the SPD asking Becker to leave the store. And if Becker was being detained in the store against his wishes, then there’s no probable cause to arrest for trespassing.

    (Moreover, the SPD officer’s report also does not establish reasonable suspicion to have detained Becker in the first place. There is no claim that Becker did anything more than take the photograph, which falls far short of the standard of reasonable suspicion necessary to detain him. An alternate basis for his detention and/or arrest would have been if Becker had been asked to leave the premises, but we can be sure that wasn’t the case either…)

  9. 7 no really I am on the edge of my seat waiting for the next riveting development in this terrible tragic miscarriage of justice

  10. @6,

    Actually, yes, it is.

    Check this out.

    And this.

    Of course, I’ve been trying to pry a recording of my own encounter with the SPD out of them for months. So far my observation has been that they only acknowledge the existence of these recordings when it benefits them.

  12. @11,

    I hope the cameras come back. An offhand remark about the disinfectant qualities of sunlight comes to mind.

    On that note, I find it interesting that the existence of a recording of the Becker incident was not brought to light until the preponderance of evidence had begun to tilt clearly against the SPD.

  13. #12, the way I read that article, they were just shelving them until they could meet with union leaders. Maybe they negotiated them back into service.

  15. I care about this story. This kind of thing pisses me off.

    A friend of a friend told me how security down by the cruise ship docks told her that she couldn’t take a picture of a docked cruise ship due to “Homeland Security.” It’s a bunch of fucking bullshit.

    Making up laws and rule of man is what the Taliban is all about. Last I checked, this was America, and we had rule of fucking law!

  16. So, does no one else besides myself appreciate the irony of SPD surreptitiously making an audio recording of an interaction with a man being detained for quite legally making a visual recording of two rent-a-cops refilling an ATM?

  17. Papers, please!

    So when do these Loomis people sevice that ATM? I’d like to go take some pictures, and I won’t be presenting any credentials to anyone who requests them.

    I’m most concerned with the situation surrounding Becker’s refusal to show his papers, along with other people’s misperceptions about it.

    Please see the Flex Your Rights Foundation’s FAQ, particularly #7: “When do I have to show ID?”. See also The Identity Project’s “What’s wrong with showing ID?”

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