In 2002, after numerous complaints about racial profiling by the
Seattle Police Department, the city council began looking for a way to
settle the debate over accusations of unfair policing. Council Member
Richard McIver came up with a plan to monitor how officers were
conducting stops: install video cameras in cop cars to protect
citizens, as well as officers, from complaints of biased policing. “For
about three years, there was a group that was working with the police
department and the councils about how to get information fairly from
arrests,” McIver says. “I suggested putting a camera in the car [as] an
impartial third party.” To this day, Seattle Police Officers Guild
(SPOG) President Rich O’Neill claims racial profiling was a myth. But,
he says the guild went along with McIver’s plan anyway.
According to McIver, getting the cameras into patrol cars was
problematic, and the process of negotiating with the police guild and
installing the cameras took longer than it should have. However, since
the program began, officers have benefited from having an objective
“witness” just as much as the public. “Two years ago, [a woman claimed]
an officer groped her and spoke inappropriately [during an arrest],”
O’Neill says. “She [even] signed an OPA complaint.” But, because of
in-car video, O’Neill says the officer was exonerated and the woman was
charged with making a false complaint.
When The Stranger heard that there was videotape of an
incident we first reported in November—a University District
arrest where witnesses claimed the officers used an extreme amount of
force to subdue two men following a jaywalking incident [“Head Banger,”
Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, Nov 29, 2007]—it seemed like the perfect
opportunity to test McIver’s program out. However, rather than hand
over a tape, which could exonerate the officers, the Seattle Police
Department refused a public disclosure request for the in-car
video—filmed on a public street—because of “privacy
issues.”
The council’s legislation makes it clear that the push for cameras
was to respond to citizen complaints of racial profiling. “Whereas the
city is committed to policing procedures that are fair, equitable, and
constitutional,” the ordinance says. However, the legislation gives SPD
quite a bit of leeway in determining who gets access to videotapes.
People involved in an incident are allowed to see tapes, but beyond
that, SPD was only required to “develop procedures for responding to
public requests that are in accordance with Washington State’s public
disclosure laws.” Indeed, SPD has set up a procedure, in the form of
denial letters.
The department says they aren’t releasing the tape to protect the
two men, Mark Hays and Michael Lujan. “I don’t think the officers would
have a problem [with releasing the tape],” says SPD attorney Leo Poort.
According to Poort, state statutes prohibit the department from
releasing videotapes “until the criminal and civil matters are
finished.”
Maybe, but according to Theresa Allman—Lujan’s attorney—
the tape is fairly damning. When the video begins, Allman says Lujan
and Hays are already on the ground. Three officers are on top of Hays,
hitting him, kicking him, and banging his head into the ground. Another
officer, she says, perches over Lujan with his knee in his back. Both
Hays and Lujan, Allman says, appear passive and are not resisting.
The Stranger has not viewed the tape, so we don’t know
whether this is all just legal bluster. However, this certainly
wouldn’t be the first time SPD was burned by videotape.
In 2007, a police car video of a 2005 arrest outside of a Capitol
Hill nightclub went public. On the tape, the man being arrested can
repeatedly be heard pleading with officers to stop kicking him, as he
lay handcuffed in the street. The man filed suit against SPD, and the
case was settled for $185,000. Earlier in 2007, a drugstore security
camera captured a downtown drug arrest of a wheelchair-bound man, who
complained officers had planted drugs and assaulted him.
SPD’s ensuing internal investigation drew attention and criticism
from local attorneys, civil rights groups, and the city council’s own
police oversight panel, and there were even calls for Chief Gil
Kerlikowske’s resignation.
Eventually, the tape of the University District incident may be
submitted as evidence and become publicly accessible. It too
could
prove to be quite damning for the
officers involved. 
