Police Chief Accused of Something

Alright, it's probably time to start paying attention. This is the story of the guy in the wheel chair that the bicycle cops arrested on drug charges that you've probably seen on the news, or, if you haven't, you will soon. The arrest was videotaped and the tape fails to show the arrest as it was depicted by the officers in their report. You can watch it here, or if that doesn't work it's linked from the Times' website. A forensic video analyst has submitted a report on his examination of the video and the police report and he's calling bullshit on the SPD. Didn't happen like that, he says of the police report. The police report claims that a rock was found in his lap and that that's why they stopped him in the first place. The video analyst's report says they don't appear to have found anything in his lap and they roughed him up a bit with some unnecessary clamp holds.

All of that has been around for a while. What the new report says is that Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske intervened in that investigation in an odd manner ("extraordinary measures"), to the extent of having a witness whose testimony matches the arresting officers' account sprung.

From the Seattle Times:

The report found that internal police investigators had gone so far as to obtain the release of a witness from jail on an unrelated drug charge in exchange for her statement, which is contradicted by others at the scene. Even so, the chief cleared the officers of the most serious charges in a news conference that contained misleading statements, the report says.

"We can only speculate what OPA's final proposed disposition might have been had the chief not gotten so deeply involved, simultaneously diminishing his own objectivity and chilling the investigators' independent judgment," the report said.

The chief's meddling, the report says, "perhaps unwittingly sacrificed the integrity of OPA's fact-finding mission for the sake of a desired outcome."