But criminal defense attorney James Egan never expected the city would preemptively sue him just for asking for police dash cam video.

Wait, the city is suing him for requesting public records.  Well maybe he was just pestering them with BS requests.

The situation involves two cases Egan handled pro bono. He believed the videos in each case show officer misconduct. Egan wanted to know if those officers had other questionable arrests, so he asked for 36 additional dash-cam videos.

Seattle PD is arguing that they are caught in the privacy law, what fails me though is these videos are a matter of public record.  There are admissible in court as evidence.  The only reason I know of privacy laws being involved is if the victim has been sexually assaulted.  But then we see the real motivation behind these efforts.  It has nothing to do with protecting the privacy of the public and everything to do with protecting their corrupt police officers.

The city argues it doesn’t have to release any videos for three years. That also happens to be when the statute of limitations runs out for suing the city and, as a KOMO News investigation discovered, it is also when dash-cam videos are routinely erased from the system.

Wonder why they don’t have to release videos until after the statute of limitations?  Could it be a game of cover your ass kids?  Remember this is the same department who shot someone in the back.  This also isn’t their first rodeo in the count either.  Three or more times is enemy action. 

State Sponsored Criminal Count 234: Pete Holmes

Because when an officer beats someone, hold on to the video and delay it until it no longer matters.

They just can’t stop, and this time they’re using your tax money to help shield them.

The department believes a public records fight over thousands of dash cam videos could carry a heavy price tag this year, according to the city’s own internal documents.

Well how bad could it be?

The department has already paid out more than $100,000, and this year it expects the amount to nearly triple with a projected loss of at least $300,000.

They’ve already been slapped before regarding this but they keep coming back because suppressing video is the cornerstone which protects their hired goons officers.  When video gets out, that’s when officers get caught.  Maybe they think they actually have a chance though and are justified.

Egan also discovered an email from the city attorney’s office about a lawsuit filed by KOMO News. We sued last fall after SPD refused a request for police videos. The email indicates the city believes its chances of winning the case after court appeals are less than 50 percent.

So in other words they’re spending money that isn’t theirs on a frivolous lawsuit to protect criminals hired by the state.

State Sponsored Criminal Count 282: Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes

Because the job of the City Attorney is to waste taxpayer dollars protecting the state’s hired goons who terrorize those same taxpayers.

I got another email from Ry this morning.  At this point I firmly believe that Seattle has to be out for some sort of record for most consecutive days in the press.  This doesn’t make the full count as it wasn’t a police officer who committed the crime, but the police stood off to the side.

The man is Michael Lionnel Edwards, also known as Charles Edwards.
According to court documents, Edwards is a member of the Vice Lords gang
and his victims are littered across several states. His criminal
history includes robbery with serious bodily harm in Indiana, assault in
Minnesota, and aggravated assault in North Dakota.

So here we have a known felon with a history so thick that officers would easily see the danger he is.  The woman, while undergoing cancer treatment let this monster in her house as he claimed that he would help her.  All that did was give the wolf entry and her hell soon began.

Instead, Cindy says Edwards took over her life, even changing her locks,
so he could lock her inside. Then, in September of 2010, she was
recovering from surgery when Edwards came home drunk. “He had been
putting a gun in my face.”

When Edwards passed out a girlfriend
warned her, “you can’t come back here, he is going to kill you. When he
comes to he is going to kill you.”

What does she do?  She goes to the police like the media and the state keep telling us to do.  The better to protect us they claim.  They tell her to call 911 and they dispatch officers to the apartment.  Upon arrival at the apartment and discovering he is still there they decided to stand down and leave him be.  A known violent felon who threatened a woman, we’re not going to arrest him.  Now remember the role of the police is to investigate your murder, not protect you.  That said at this point he was breaking the law trespassing as the home owner didn’t want him there anymore.

Instead of removing him from the residence, here’s what happened to the resident.

For the next ten days Cindy, still recovering from surgery, was homeless.

“It was terrible. I had gone there, I had talked to them, I had done everything they had asked me to,” she said. 

Cindy was stuck on the street, living in her car with her dog until Edwards was eventually arrested and convicted.

The department claims if they handle a domestic incident incorrectly there will be a corrective action.  Many of the officers felt personally that the incident was not handled correctly.  The corrective action?

But the Office of Professional Accountability recommended no discipline,
only supervisory intervention. Department command staff overruled,
saying the commander should have used special units like SWAT to arrest
Edwards, rather than leave Cindy homeless.

See those black suited ninjas, they don’t use those in actual dangerous situations.  They just either call in to the criminal and talk him out or just walk off to arrest him later.  The only time any department uses a swat team is for a non-violent offender to harass, intimidate, and kill those who have committed victimless crimes.

Let this be a serious warning to those who would think of letting a stranger into your house.  We often want to believe that people are inherently good however there are wolves out there and you cannot tell who it is you’re letting in your house.  This woman took a promise to help with the bills as a sign of good intentions, sadly it resulted her arrival in hell.

That said, this seems like a classic case of what the police are there for.  Someone was threatening another person, the threats were not idle, and then they were trespassing after the fact.  It was a classic domestic incident given the use of a weapon, which as a felon that’s unpossible, and the police showed up, saw he was there, turned around and left.  The end result was to leave a woman recovering from surgery homeless while letting the armed felon roam free.

So this begs the question, why do we have SWAT teams?  If they aren’t willing to deploy them for incidents such as this why have them?  Are they just trained to kick down the door of a house of the innocent and kill anyone inside?  Are they just trained to shoot the dogs who are in a kennel?

This is a classic demonstration of two principal issues:

1. You cannot depend on the state for anything.
2. The armed militarization of the police has nothing to do with catching armed and dangerous criminals.

Remember both those points and draw from it what you will.

*The record comment originated with pyrotek85.

This is unsurprising given the how the City and PD have been attempting to prevent the release of these dash cams.  What is doubly entertaining though is this:

So what did the officers claim they were doing? De-escalating the situation. That’s right. During an investigation by SPD’s Office of Professional Accountability, according to documents obtained by SW, the officers claimed that that Oregon and Perez were “obvious gang-bangers.” (See pdf of OPA’s summary findings.) Officer Corey Williams explained further:

Yeah, de-escalate doesn’t mean what they think it means.  Where I’m from they were escalating the situation to provide a better reason for the use of force.

I could tick it more than one but right now I feel like crap and this is my second time writing this pile of garbage.*

State Sponsored Criminal Count 286: Officer Brett Schoenberg

Because when you’re telling someone you’ll beat the crap out of them and skull fuck them, you’re really saying just calm down!

via Uncle

*WinXP auto rebooted after an update and Windows Live Writer didn’t keep my previous post.  While sick that means this post becomes double abbreviated.