Great reporting Rich.

The solution is clear. I agree with Danny Westneat over at The Times that real police reform is about more money and less accountability for the SPD.

We've been doing that for over 100 years and look how well it's worked.

Abolition is the only way forward. LEO the way it exists (the way it was created) is to uphold white supremacy - ideology and policy - through violence and terrorism. Enough paying people to murder Black people and use and abuse their power on the taxpayer dime. Cops don't prevent crime. Cops don't solve crime. Cops commit plenty of crime, enable crime, and cover-up crime. All the crime that is not being committed, enabled, covered up, prevented, or solved by cops will not go away if there are no cops, but there WILL be less crime.

Take the money (estimated at one trillion dollars annually) spent on cops and invest it in communities: housing them, feeding them, employing them, educating them, and empowering them.

A world without cops is possible.

I just can't take a supposed journalist seriously that uses the word 'fucking'. What are you like a teenager or something? Can't find the right words to express your meaning? Think it's clever?

This seems pretty consistent with Seattle overall nowadays. Incriminating emails? Whoops can’t find them. Political malfeasase and break the law? Your intentions were pure so it’s all good. Terrorize your neighbors and assault people? Your anger is justified so go about your business. There is no accountability for anything anymore. Oh well.

@4,

There's an incredibly simple and obvious option available to ya there sport. Stop reading the paper and it's blog.

Fucking dumbass..

@6 A world without cops is possible. A United States without cops would be infinitely safer. You will never convince me otherwise. Abolition is the only way.

https://aworldwithoutpolice.org/

Meanwhile: Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States. Think about that. The leading cause of death of young men in the United States would be completely eradicated if there were no police.

As a child I called the police - on men beating the shit out of girls and/or women. They did exactly nothing. The police do not give a fuck about anyone or anything. They are violent terrorists, paid in taxpayer dollars to commit crimes and acts of violence against the communities in which they exist.

I would not call the police to save my life. If someone were in my home trying to harm me or actually harming me I would do everything in my power to burn the house down first.

6, maybe not, but it is possible to have cops who are not armed to the teeth, roided up and ready to take their personal grievances out on citizens with next to no accountability. Other countries can make this work but its just another thing the greatest nation on earth cant seem to figure out.

Countries Where Police Do Not Carry Guns
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-where-police-do-not-carry-guns.html

The system of police "accountability" in Seattle is working 100% as it is supposed to: have folks debate a single fucking instance of police abuse while 99% of the cases remain improperly investigated if investigated at all. "Investigated," that is, by SPD sergeants who spend 2 years in OPA & rotate back into regular SPD duties after that having to face the officers they "investigated."

Lets ignore the fact that there have been thousands of complaints & hundreds of folks seriously traumatized or injured by SPD, yet there has (to date) been only one single case where OPA recommended more than a "reprimand" -- and that was a 2 day suspension, maybe with pay -- in all these cases. And also, let's ignore, that 29 people have been killed by SPD since John T. Williams with every case either not investigated by OPA or determined to be "Lawful and Proper."

We don't even know the discipline recommended by the OPA in this case! Was it the 2 day suspension?

Complains from Councilmembers Gonzalez & Herbold are disingenuous in the extreme: they know full well this system is designed to fail since they designed it & are determined not to change it.

We need full civilian control of police oversight now through a Seattle initiative! SeattleSTOP.org

@13 what makes you think civilian oversight will lead to better outcomes?

@1, @6, @10: SSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHhhhhh...be vewy vewy quiet.....before even more Elmer's leaks out your ears!
HUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHHHUHUHUHUHUHHUHHHhhhhhh.....

@3, @8, & @11 xina and @9 Brent Gumbo for the WIN!

There's this thing called the internet and if you search leading cause of death of young men police you get quite a number of web sites stating this statistic. The internet is magical like that. In fact you can get over 55 million search results in a matter of seconds (less time than it takes for you to write a comment on SLOG).

Where did I personally get that information?
Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793

"In a statement, Seattle City Councilmember and public safety chair Lisa Herbold ..."

Please stop issuing statements, CM Herbold, and please start issuing subpoenas. A lot of them. The entire series of events, from the SPD attacking protesters, to the SPOG members going on an illegal wildcat strike of the East Precinct, through all of the violent shenanigans in the resultant CHOP, needs to be established by witnesses, under oath & penalty of perjury. As detailed in this post, the SPD has now spent more than twenty years exhibiting utter contempt for the right of us citizens peaceably to assemble in Belltown, Downtown, and Pike-Pine. When we dare to do so, they treat us as nothing more than target practice for their pseudo-military toys. We really, really need to learn why that is, and maybe start to fix it. Issuing statements will do nothing to accomplish this.

If all you are going to do is issue statements, please resign now, and let us citizens of District 1 elect someone who knows how to use the powers we gave you.

Ah yes the "blank on black crime" bullshit trotted out to change the topic when racists don't want to hear about police murdering civilians!

https://www.demos.org/blog/myth-black-black-crime-epidemic

@14 "what makes you think civilian oversight will lead to better outcomes?"

First, what are the options? Defunding or abolishing the police -- if that is what folks want -- will take time and it is extraordinarily unlikely we will ever get to the point where there are zero public safety people with guns (not even the UK does that). So, whatever your belief or goals, we need a harm reduction strategy now. Besides, even without police we will still need an accountability system for whoever engages in public safety. Any system where the force of the state can be exercised will have abuse, so we will always need oversight, hopefully by civilians independent of those using state sanctioned force.

Second, we have never had a functioning true civilian oversight system in the US, as defined by civilians with the power to investigate and discipline police misconduct. Nashville's Civilian Oversight Board was voted in through initiative (by ~80%) in 2018 and has only started fully functioning this year (and from what I have seen it is functioning well). Oakland and other cities just voted in civilian oversight last November. We can't say pizza sucks if the only pizza you have experienced is Papa John's.

Third, we can't fix a problem until we understand it. As @DivestSPD https://twitter.com/DivestSPD has made clear over the last 10 months, the degree of egregious abuse that SPD officers have not just gotten away with, but been rewarded with by promotions within SPD, has gone unseen because of our failed accountability system. So, with real 100% civilian oversight -- see SeattleSTOP.org -- we would better understand the problem and figure out better solutions.

Does that answer your question?

@14: I've always found it an odd contradiction that when it comes to the military everyone gets why we need civilian oversight, but when it comes to the police, a far more dangerous militarized group since they directly impact all of us on a daily basis, there are people like you that question why civilian oversight is needed at all.

Why if I were cynical, I might think your view reflects that you are a cop yourself, so share the contempt most police have for the public when it comes to talk of any external oversight.

@23: I appreciate the work you do over at https://twitter.com/DivestSPD in documenting the problematic behavior of the SPD.

Have you considered setting up something similar for the King County Sheriff Office? As far as I can tell, they show even more contempt for the public and broader criminality than even the SPD.

@25 I am not DivestSPD, so please head on over to twitter & thank them directly -- they do great work & help us appreciate what real accountability would uncover & get rid of. I work with SeattleSTOP.org which is trying to bring full civilian oversight of police to Seattle.

@17: From your referenced PNAS study:
"We use data on police-involved deaths"
So they are already cherry-picking their data. What about non police involved deaths?

You must admit that confronting a crowd of screaming protesters would make you wet your pants, so some level of negligent behavior from law-enforcement may be tolerated, however this incessant bullying and brutality by law-enforcement is unacceptable and we have finally hit the wall. We should study the European model for law-enforcement where the police use a more humanitarian and intelligent approach to dealing with crime situations, without the threat of bodily harm and firearms. The police tactics of harassment and murder must cease immediately. Let us defund the police and reapportion the funds to social services and providing food and shelter for the displaced and homeless. Sawant for Mayor.

@28: "We should study the European model for law-enforcement"

Water cannons? Not acceptable here, thanks to their past (fire dept. hose) use.