The Office of Police Accountability (OPA) has opened an investigation into Seattle Police Department Detective Anthony Belgarde after he pulled over a King County Metro bus last Thursday for “road rage.”
A passenger on the bus filmed the heated interaction between the bus driver and Belgarde, during which Belgarde suggested the driver could be arrested for obstruction. The driver said Belgarde pulled over the bus after the driver honked at the officers for cutting him off, according to King County Metro radio calls. Belgarde drove an unmarked police car at the time.
The OPA’s complaint tracker has no details about the stop nor a list of which policies Belgarde may have violated, but two videos on social media, recorded radio chatter, and information provided by a Metro employee familiar with the incident helped fill in some of the gaps about what happened before and after Belgarde boarded the bus.
Around midday on Thursday, March 28, a RapidRide C bus heading to Chandler’s Cove pulled out of a bus zone on 35th Avenue Southwest when a black Ford started to pull out in front of the bus. The bus driver honked at the car driver, at which point the car driver flashed his rear police lights. The bus driver continued on his route, but moments later the cops pulled up behind the driver and activated their lights. The bus driver pulled over because he assumed the officers had their lights on to clear traffic and pass the bus. When the cop car, which the driver said was unmarked, did not pass the bus, the driver drove to his next stop at Southwest Avalon Way and Southwest Yancy Street. The cop followed the driver, pulled up behind him, and then boarded the bus.
The first 30-second video clip on social media appears to show Belgarde in the front of the bus talking to the driver. In the video, the driver explains the moment where Belgarde cut off the bus and the moment he pulled over to let the cops pass after they activated their lights. Belgarde claims the bus driver ran from the cops.
In the second video, the bus driver says he had the right to honk his horn to let Belgarde know, “Hey, I’m here,” but that Belgarde had no right to cut off a bus. Belgarde denies cutting off the bus and then tells the driver to call his supervisor and tell them to put another driver on the route.
“Are you going to take me to jail?” the driver asks.
“Maybe, right now you’re obstructing,” Belgarde says.
When the bus driver asks why Belgarde stopped him in the first place, Belgarde says, “For the road rage.” The driver then denies having road rage and refuses to give Belgarde his ID while they wait to hear from the driver’s supervisor.
As the driver explains over the radio what’s happening, he mentions that Belgarde wants to arrest the driver for obstruction. Belgarde then denies saying he planned to arrest the driver. One of the off-camera passengers quietly laughs and then mimics the officer saying, “‘I might take you to jail for obstruction.’”
Radio calls between the driver and his supervisors captured a supervisor telling the driver to give the officer any information he requested and a supervisor would arrive at the scene shortly. When supervisors arrived on scene, they spoke with the two SPD officers and the bus driver. A metro employee familiar with the situation told The Stranger they had no details on what Belgarde and his partner told supervisors, but the driver recounted more or less the same thing he said over the radio and on the video. One of the supervisors returned to the bus driver after speaking to SPD and talked to him about apologizing to the officer. The driver refused, arguing that, “It wasn’t my fault, they were at fault.” The supervisor then relieved the driver of duty for the day.
Metro spokesperson Al Sanders said the agency knew about the video and confirmed its veracity. Officers made no arrests and Metro bus operations planned to look into the matter and would speak with the driver as well as passengers, Sanders said.
SPD confirmed that a traffic stop occurred and provided an incident number, but they gave no further details about the stop.
The person who posted the video of the interaction included a caption that said, “I was one of 2 dozen ppl on this bus ride this AM the driver was completely in the right and the officer had his ego bruised.”
No law in Washington bans road rage specifically, though some laws do prohibit aggressive driving. Honking a horn to alert someone you might hit them, as the driver said he did, does not appear to be illegal under Washington law. Whether or not the driver violated any laws, he may still face consequences from Metro. Metro’s rules and procedures tell drivers to cooperate with law enforcement.
Special Victims Unit Detective Belgarde may also face consequences depending on what the OPA finds in its investigation. The OPA has investigated Belgarde before, including in 2015 after a Port Orchard City Prosecutor charged him with fourth-degree assault for his involvement in the beating of a man at a bar. The prosecutor eventually dismissed the charges in exchange for Belgarde paying the victim compensation. The OPA recommended no discipline in that case due to the fact that the investigation went past the Seattle police union’s negotiated 180-day time limit for OPA cases. The OPA did recommend discipline against Belgarde in 2016 after he and two other officers shot at Cornielous Morris, an unarmed Black man. Then-police chief Kathleen O’Toole reversed the OPA’s disciplinary recommendation in that case.
Correction: This story was updated to more accurately reflect Belgarde’s disciplinary history and Washington State law.
Road rage? Sounds more like ‘roid rage.
“Are you going to take me to jail?” the driver asks.
“Maybe, right now you’re obstructing,” Belgarde says.
jesus christ, what a thin-skinned tiny -dicked baby. so glad he has a gun. fucking clown shoes SPD
SPD and KCSD pull these kinds of bullshit moves all the time: I’ve personally witnessed cops flashing their lights to run stop signs and yellow/red lights, pass heavy traffic via turn lanes, exceeding speed limits, etc., etc. And no, they’re not doing it because they just got a call, because as soon as they pass whatever “obstruction” is making them late for their donut break, they turn off the lights and slow down. It’s like driving a cop car, whether marked or no, gives them the impression they can just flagrantly break traffic laws they’d pull civilians over without a second thought.
it’s the *rounding error of cops that give the other *rounding error of cops a bad name.
“The OPA did recommend discipline against Belgarde in 2016 after he and two other officers shot and killed Cornielous Morris, an unarmed Black man.”
Not to rush to this assholes defense or anything but the linked story says he missed and the guy lived
Can we at minimum not hire cops that get into bar fights. Can we put the bar that high?
@5 and @6
Thank you for catching those, they needed to be corrected. – Ashley
@10 Always! You all keep me humble.
SPD should be prohibited from hiring any more ‘apples’ until they can demonstrate their ability to effectively remove any and all ‘bad apples’ they currently have in their ‘barrel.’
@11 @10 @Ashley Nerbovig – Don’t correct the article yet. I think Ahab’s interpretation is incorrect, or it is a gray area.
According to Spokane Police here: https://spokanepolicereforms.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/unmarked-vehicles-fact-sheet.pdf – it is disallowed
According to this Kitsap Sun article: https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/news/2020/01/17/legality-using-unmarked-cars-speed-enforcement/4504427002/ – it seems to be a gray area that police departments are taking advantage of.
And from my own reading of the RCW, only the WSP is allowed to use unmarked cars for traffic violations if it is part of the ADAT team. Local police and sheriffs are not allowed to use unmarked cars unless it is for “special undercover or confidential investigative purposes” – and traffic control is not a special undercover or confidential investigative purpose.
It seems to me that departments are getting away with how poorly the RCW is written, but this creates an unsafe scenario for carjacking and impersonating officers. Perhaps instead of correcting the article, you should dive deeper into this gray area.
@6 what traffic infraction was alleged? “Road rage” isn’t an infraction, and I don’t know any law that says a driver needs to show identification to an officer having a temper tantrum. The bus driver should be fully exonerated
Just the other day I watched a cop car (ahem, SUV) suddenly swerve into the path of a bus I was riding, forcing the driver to slam the brakes. But in this case the bus driver didn’t honk. Apparently that moment of professional self-restraint saved us a half-hour of idling by the curb.
Personally I think Seattle has enough police officers. Perhaps not an excess number of them, but enough. They’re just allocated in sometimes ridiculous ways. I don’t know why a one- or two-person encampment sweep needs to involve a half-dozen cops, but that seems to be standard procedure. Now multiply that by the number of sweeps (a dozen? two dozen?) in an average day and it’s no wonder real crimes don’t get a faster response.
@16: “If we haven’t expressed what we want the rules of society are to be in the law, via are elected legislators, that’s on us, not the person, or agency, doing something we don’t like, because the law doesn’t prohibit it.”
Actually we ought to expect a professional public safety agency to have a point of view on unclear laws relating to public safety, and to take the lead on establishing clarity.
@13 Ahab – the RCW DOES prohibit the use of unmarked cars from operations other than special undercover or confidential investigative purposes.
The exception clause is what is causing confusion:
“This section shall not apply to vehicles of a sheriff’s office, local police department, or any vehicles used by local peace officers under public authority for special undercover or confidential investigative purposes.”
FACT: The “undercover or confidential investigative” requirement applies to all the vehicles in that
sentence. If that sentence did in fact cover two separate categories of vehicles, they would be noted
with an (a) and a (b) as is done in the very next sentence which reads: “This subsection shall not
apply to: (a) Any municipal transit vehicle operated for purposes of providing public mass
transportation; (b) any vehicle governed by the requirements of subsection (4)…”
It is expressly prohibited, but because people misread it, people like you are giving them powers they don’t have. And then the reporter amends the article to further confuse people and take away our power one bit at a time.
This cop created an unsafe situation for both himself and others: escalating a situation over a honk at a car that wasn’t identifiable. In similar situations, how would a citizen know the difference between an undercover cop making a prohibited traffic stop and a carjacking?
@16 you have a view of the law as terrifying as it is absurd. Law preserves the rights of citizens but constrains the powers of government. Police are empowered to make traffic stops ONLY to the extent authorized by law.
@21 Ahab
I actually did do some further investigation on this, I called SPD in the flesh and got a Sgt with traffic enforcement. I specifically asked what their policy was and how both a citizen and an officer would avoid a dangerous situation when unmarked cars are used for traffic enforcement (i.e. causing a citizen to suspect a carjacking in progress etc).
He offered no official policy but did make a point to say that currently SPD does not use any unmarked cars for their (shrinking) traffic enforcement group. That said, he also claimed that other groups like SWAT etc. could make traffic stops if they ‘needed to’. So basically more gray area nonsense here – they think they can do whatever they want so long as they make up an excuse, regardless of the law.
To your comment about “confidential investigative purpose could be catching speeders, or other motor vehicle violations” – no, the SPD is not permitted to set up ‘sting operations’ for traffic enforcement by RCW 46.08.065(1) and this is evidenced by the fact that later in (3) it states that only the WSP can: “(3) …. Traffic control vehicles of the Washington state patrol may be exempted from the requirements of subsection (2) of this section at the discretion of the chief of the Washington state patrol.” — PROVIDED that the WSP Chief so orders, which is the special “Aggressive Driving Apprehension Team” (ADAT) that you previously linked. (Which while it seems to be allowed by the law, it also creates dangerous situations that I completely disagree with).
It might be true that arguing with this alone might be difficult, but its plain to see in this case with the Metro bus that the driver had no way of knowing this was a cop when he honked (justifiably). Had the car been properly marked it would have been obvious to the bus driver that maybe the cop was making the aggressive move in order to respond to a call etc and there would have been no problem. Having cops perform ‘sting operations’ by driving aggressively and then pulling people over when they react to it is essentially entrapment, and is forbidden in most cases (as it should be) on the road because of how extra dangerous that would be with moving vehicles for everyone involved.
The Stranger is now altering stories based upon some moron commenter’s interpretation of the law? What the fuck?
@23 “nobody was injured so it wasn’t a dangerous traffic maneuver” is an insane standard. Almost as insane as arguing the cops can do whatever they want as long as it isn’t specifically prohibited by RCW and the public has only ourselves to blame
@25,
A moron commenter who’s been banned from posting to the site literally dozens of times to boot.
“Special Victims Unit Detective Belgarde may also face consequences depending on what the OPA finds in its investigation.”
This is the most naive part of the article. Does anyone believe that an SPD officer will face consequences over this? They can literally kill people without consequence. Whatever slap on the wrist that the OPA might suggest will be bitterly contested by SPOG, and it will become another in a long line of jokes that SPD officers will recount to each other in between running over pedestrians.
Anthony Belgarde. One of Seattle’s Finest. Bad cops make for bad police forces. And the city electeds obviously want nothing to do with the matter. Duck and run.