UPDATE 12/23 — Including Responses to some comments
This story is bY no means finished.
Regarding departmental discipline — I do not know the specifics of the Tacoma Police Union Contract and provisions for departmental discipline or civil litigation. Regarding departmental discipline, most likely there are provisions for appeal and perhaps mediation. In Seattle, just up the freeway, both are in place. The mediation has caused all sorts of difficulties. It generally results in a far reduced punishment and sometimes reinstatement of a dismissed officer. That is all possible in this case. The provisions for mediation are one of the major reasons why the DoJ decree in Seattle remains at least partly in place after 11 years. Regarding civil action the attorney is confident, and there are ways around the provisions for qualified immunity. In practice what generally happens is the City ultimately ends up paying for the vast majority of the costs, including attorney’s fees. The individual officers simply do not have deep enough pockets.
Furthermore, the video linked to in one of the last comments, mentions that the State Governor’s office will have an announcement soon. So there may be further action at the state level. This case was prosecuted by state AG’s office, which took over the case because Pierce County had botched the investigation.. I do not recall the specific details, Perhaps some other Kossack does recall the details and can refresh my memory.
Additionally, there has been speculation that the federal government might file civil rights violations against the officers. The Western Washington District Court will probably have an announcement in that regard after the first of the year.
Finally, there is another police murder case coming up for prosecution in King County early in 2024. King County is adjacent to Pierce County and is the home of Seattle. The case is also based on the Washington State Police Accountability Law, passed by Initiative (I-940) in 2018. King County has contracted with the state AG’s office to use the same prosecuting team. The cases are considerably different and the ultimate verdict will hopefully be different.
Basically, as I’ve mentioned Seattle has a long history of attempting to reform the policing function. In recent years that has spread to King County, which provides policing functions for many of the Seattle suburbs.
Regarding State Policing Efforts — Efforts to obtain professional, 21st Century Policing are a major ongoing project in the Washington State Legislature and the people have enacted initiatives to obtain professional policing. We have a biennial legislative cycle with a major budgetary legislative session in odd numbered years and a shorter session in even numbered years. Sometimes, not always, more significant reform is accomplished in the shorter session because there the budgetary pressures are less, with only a supplemental budget being required. Measures that were introduced and didn’t make the cut in the primary session, will get modified, reintroduced and enacted in the even year session. But there is the pressure on the legislators to get out on the campaign trail, and they are banned from raising money during the legislative session.
Washington State’s people have spoken and they want professional 21st Century policing.
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Late yesterday afternoon the three Tacoma police officers were found not guilty on all counts. The Seattle Times report is here:
www.seattletimes.com/…
I did not follow this story closely enough to make many comments, except as indicated below:
- The Police associations went all out to defend these officers as they wanted to kneecap the Washington State Police Accountability Act from the beginning. We’ll have to wait and see how things play out, but this is not a promising beginning.
- The officers all were able to make statements that Manuel Ellis made animalistic sounds when he pleaded for air, but when the prosecution in the closing arguments attempted to claim that the officers had failed to respect Ellis as a human being, the judge jumped all over the prosecuting attorney. I find this to be somewhat questionable. Why was the state Attorney General’s office not able to introduce the issues of racism and white supremacy? The AG’s office prosecuted the case and is very highly regarded. It has established an excellent record under Robert Ferguson, the current AG.
- The final comment is that though considerable progress has been made in professionalizing the police in Washington State and especially in Seattle, there remains a long road ahead to complete the task. The Seattle Police Guild and the various police organizations are not going to accept reform easily.