Ok so now more people need firing besides Officer Whitlatch.

Let's get to it.

Great reporting on this story Ansel. But please follow up with the city district attorney office to find out why the case went as far as it did. They must have watched the tape yet still pressed charges. They're part of the broken system and need to be held accountable as well.

Keep up the good work.

FORMATTING FOOBAR WHEN RE-SIZING BROWSER

More firings are needed. Craven bunch of criminals.

@1: Don't forget:

• Benjamin E. Archer #6938, who provided backup at the time of the incident


• Chris Coles #6940, who wrote the incident report


• Joe L. Lam #4767, who screened the arrest and approved the incident report


• Lam's supervisor, who undoubtedly knows that Lam allows his subordinates to engage in fraud and abuse


• All other SPD employees who have supervised Whitlatch, particularly he or she who allowed Whitlatch to train other cops for 13 years


• All other partners who observed Whitlatch's on-the-job behavior, such as the one who stood by while she harassed the Metro bus driver who asked her to move her car from the bus lane


• The OPA investigators who reviewed complaints about the Wingate incident, the complaint about Whitlatch's racist publications, and any other complaints about Whitlatch, resulting in completely ineffective outcomes


• Those staff who, upon finding this shitstorm brewing a couple days ago, seemingly neglected to present O'Toole with a complete history of Whitlatch's employment history, complaints, and investigations.


• Kathleen O'Toole, who neglected to demand the aforementioned history of Whitlatch


• Mayor Ed Murray, who stepped into office and kicked some of SPD's best people to the curb simply because they were associated with former Mayor Mike McGinn, and who appointed a former SPOG vice president as interim chief


• Murray's advisers on police matters, who like Murray, apparently know and/or care more about playing politics than about the internal workings of our police department

Gotta put this out there, and I'm a proud and out member of the LGBTQ community: Cynthia Whitlach is an angry, man-hating dyke. I'm sure I'll get plenty of responses for this, but facts are facts - and I've dealt with Whitlach several times before (she has harassed me). She hates men and is a little nuts. Put the two together and you have the core of her problem.

I say this as a proud and out member of the LGBTQ community, but I know it will bother some people reading this. So be it: Cynthia Whitlach is an angry man-hater. She's harassed women as well, but she targeted William Wingate because he was 1) Black and 2) Male.

She's nuts, dangerous and needs to fired NOW.

what's with that link to the time? "do not link?"

link to the "times" ugh. it's a weird page that maybe isn't right? you all are using a filter now for other sites to be safer it seems?

I'm "updating" the story for the reporter, who asked today about Attorney Sargent's allegation that she had not received the Wingate records from our office. Within 45 minutes today we had responded to the reporter with a complete timeline rebutting the attorney's allegations. Even in a 24/7 news cycle, that's impressive, considering the volume of work in our office. Kimberly Mills, Communications Director, Seattle City Attorney's Office.

To #11 News flash: Our prosecutor had only the police report to go on when he filed one of the two charges recommended by SPD. It's routinely the case that the in-car videos are not available when misdemeanor filing decisions are made. Kimberly Mills, Communications Director, City Attorney's Office

@Kimberly, and at no time did the prosecutor look at the video tape before handing Mr Wingate a plea bargin?????? Seriously? Did the city prosecutor not look at the evidence or did they look at the evidence and STILL decided to give Mr Wingate a plea deal that left him with a criminal record? @11 is right, you guys handled this case incompetently and should be held accountable for it.

The man was charged on July 9 and the charged dismissed by the judge on September 19 (going by http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…)

In this time a plea deal was given to Mr Wingate that would've give him a criminal record. The city prosecutors had over 2 months to view the evidence and drop the charges. They didn't. They let the system do it's thing and almost gave an innocent man a criminal record.

@Ansel please keep pushing on the city prosecutors to find out why this is acceptable and how they will be accountable. Please ask the Mayor/City Councilors to comment on the actions of the city prosecutors as well as the police. I've once heard someone say (wink):

"In the Criminal Justice System the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important groups. The police who investigate crime and the District Attorneys who prosecute the offenders. ."

Lets keep racial basis out of both groups.

Answering #2, #11,# 13, #14: Mr. Wingate was arrested on July 9. He appeared the next day in Seattle Municipal Court and, represented by a public defender, he agreed to a dispositional continuance on one misdemeanor charge. (Our office did not have the video available when we filed the charge; the span of time from arrest to court appearance was about a day.) Under the dispositional continuance, the charge was to be dismissed after two years if he had no further criminal law violations. In August, former state Rep. Dawn Mason called City Attorney Pete Holmes and asked if he would review the case. At Pete's request, Criminal Division Chief Craig Sims obtained the video from SPD, reviewed the case file and recommended to SPD that we jointly ask the court to dismiss the charge. SPD agreed, and Judge Fred Bonner dismissed the charge in September.

@Kimberly, you still don't see the problem here do you? A 70 yr old black man with no criminal record was arrest by a police force with a history of unjust racial basis, and when he came into your office claiming his innocents what your office did was kept the system rolling. Instead of giving him some benefit of the belief that he was in fact innocent, you gave him a plea deal to get him out of your hands. I'm assume he had a public defender and not the best legal advice and like many just signed the deal as the system is way to big for those without means to fight. If it wasn't for Mrs Mason, Mr Wingate plea deal would've still have been in place. It was an outside force that took getting Mr Wingate's cased dismissed, the City Attorney's office kept the system of racial basis proceeding as normal, and that is not ok. I'm not calling on people to be fired, but it would be good for a) the City Attorney's office to publicly apologize and b) figure out how to prevent this from happening in the future.

Also isn't it a crime to falsify a police report? I'm sure I would get arrested if I did it, so how come the City isn't pressing charges against officer Whitlatch?

@16: The problem, here, is the assumption by staff at the City Attorney's office that police tell the truth in their incident reports. As many of us know from direct experience, that's often not the case. Police are trained to lie in order to accomplish what they believes need to happen, they regularly commit perjury in reports and on the witness stand, yet prosecutors still assume that their word is good.

@15: Has Cynthia Whitlatch #6229 of Seattle Police Department been placed on your Brady list?