"Not Broken," Eh?

As our own Hanna Brooks Olsen put it on Friday, the Justice Department report that came out on Friday didn't tell us anything new; its findings merely reinforced what Seattle citizens, especially those of some ethnicity, have been saying for well over two decades: The people in the Seattle Police Department are wound a bit too tightly and it shows. It's been showing.

Just as unsurprising has been the response to the report from SPD Chief John Diaz. "The department is not broken," is what Diaz said in a press conference on Friday. "We have many reasons to question the validity and soundness of the DOJ's conclusions."

One can't help but wonder what those reasons could be, because there are likely twice as many reasons to believe the Justice Department's report is spot on. Let's face it, they wouldn't have come out here to look into the situation if there wasn't something to look into. Do we really need to list the various incidents that have happened at the hands of the SPD in the Seattle region? The beatings; the slurs; the deaths?

No need, as KOMO News provided new evidence of police malfeasance on Saturday, releasing footage obtained from dashboard cameras (or "dash-cams") that were added to police vehicles, initially to gather evidence of what happens at traffic stops in case the civilian tries anything funny. The report is embedded below, and contains footage of an allegedly routine traffic stop that took place in 2010.

The police can turn the dash-cams off and on at their discretion, by the way, something that has caused some consternation in recent months.

To put it in context, the above is supposed to be a routine traffic stop; invective hurled by cops captured on equipment the cops know is recording their actions. They know there's something watching, and this is what they do, shove people around, shout homophobic slurs and impugn a smaller town for a routine traffic stop. Worse yet, they falsify the reason they pull the driver over in order to cover their asses.

We buy that this behavior is not representative of the entire police force; the Justice Department itself says that "a relatively small percentage of officers are responsible for a disproportionate number of incidents where force was used" in its report. But not broken?

If it isn't broken now, when can it be declared broken?