Voters to Decide Future of Spokane Police Oversight

Feds Join Shooting Probe

From the Spokesman Review:

A man charged with attempted second-degree murder in connection with a shot targeting three black youths was ordered held in jail Tuesday as federal authorities also indicated that they would investigate the shooting as a possible hate crime.

Jimmy J. Blackburn, 29, pleaded not guilty before Superior Court Judge Sam Cozza, who ordered Blackburn to remain in custody on a $500,000 bond. Cozza set Blackburn’s trial on the three attempted murder charges for Nov. 19.

Blackburn was arrested Sept. 13 as Spokane police officers converged at the Days Inn, at 120 W. Third Ave., to investigate the shooting of Paul A. Haney, 33, who was found dead in the parking lot.

According to court records, investigators believe Kevin M. Heaton, 35, is responsible for that shooting and remains on the loose. Heaton had paid for the room in which Blackburn was found at the Days Inn, but the court records don’t indicate whether Blackburn had any involvement in the Haney shooting.

Outside the hotel, however, investigators found a red 2012 Rocketa Sicily moped that was linked to a shooting the day before near 33rd Avenue and Thor Street.

In that case, three black youths were walking on 33rd Avenue at 4:20 p.m. on Sept. 12 when they heard a white man yelling racial slurs at them. That man was later identified as Blackburn, according to court records.

Blackburn challenged them to fight. “At this time, (Blackburn) asked the victims, ‘Have you guys ever had a gun pointed at you?'” according to court records.

Blackburn then walked over to the moped – which had been reported stolen earlier that day – and grabbed a locked pistol box, the records say. Unable to open it, Blackburn threw it on the ground several times until it opened.

According to one of the boys, Blackburn “pointed the handgun” at them and said “they could have a six second head start before he shoots them,” court records state. Blackburn then began yelling for someone named “Suicide” to come out of the house at 3304 E. 33rd Ave.

Full article can be found here.

Condon Names Chief, Reigns in Treppiedi

From The Inlander:

Today was Spokane Mayor David Condon's first day on the job, and he wasted no time.

He held a press conference today, announcing his pick for an interim police chief while he continues the nationwide search for a permanent chief.

He also said he immediately took assistant city attorney Rocky Treppiedi off his duties advising the police department, something the mayor had repeatedly promised to do on the campaign trail. (Check out 12 minutes into the video for his statements regarding Treppiedi.)

And he created an "advisory board on policing" that he says will help him implement his goals for the department.

KXLY put up a raw video of the press conference. Check it out:

Paper Jam

From The Inlander:

Last fall, Ken Hoeche and his family constructed a simple wooden cross to mark the grave of his son, Jerod Hoeche, who died Nov. 18 in a rollover crash near Medical Lake.

Hoeche says he would like to place a more permanent marker on Jerod’s grave, but he is still awaiting a final accident report to send to an insurance company.

On Monday, Hoeche (pronounced “hay-key”) learned his records request is being processed and he should get the report — on or about May 1.

Hoeche’s tale of waiting months for the Police Records Division to fulfill public records requests is not unusual these days.

The division lost five clerks in the latter stages of 2010 in a hiring freeze intended to help limit Spokane’s general fund budget shortfall. With fewer clerks, the records division has suffered. Once clear of backlogs and able to turn around records requests quickly — sometimes in the same shift as the request was made — the department is now swamped by a nearly 1,500-document backlog and an announced wait time of 90 to 120 days to fulfill a request.

Nobody likes it. Not Hoeche, who will have waited more than five months. Not Bob West, who is also awaiting a final accident report to free up insurance monies for his sister Debra, who suffered skull fractures and broken ribs when she was hit by a pickup truck while crossing a downtown street. West learned on Monday it will be months before he sees that report.

“In the meantime, I have bills,” West says of the cost of caring for his sister, who is still hospitalized.

Theresa Giannetto, the department’s records manager, also does not like the lower level of service in her office. Every day, she says, people like Hoeche and West call or visit to plead for a document that will help end a financial burden during a traumatic time.

“Ninety days serves no one’s needs,” she says. Media and watchdog groups are also affected.

Local civil rights attorney Breean Beggs says access to records “is an important function of government.

“Media and public interest groups are trying to serve the public. The more sunshine on government, the better decisions get made by government leaders and the electorate,” he says. “The vicious cycle is when you don’t provide access, the citizens don’t trust you, and then they don’t vote to provide tax money to provide the services.”

The service windows inside the Public Safety Building have been cut from three to two and are closed entirely on Wednesdays so clerks can try to catch up, Giannetto says.

“The people down there [at records] are super nice, but I’m trying to put closure on this for not only me, but for [Jerod’s] wife and his mother and his brothers,” Hoeche says. “I’ve been trying to get a headstone. We’re not rich.”

Hoeche doesn’t understand the lengthy delays when, as he puts it, “we are in a computer age.”

Bob West is even more frustrated. As a city probation officer, West can access police files. “I can get the police report myself by just pushing a button … but that’s illegal,” he says.

West has used his access in a different way, taking his complaints about short staffing to Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick and Mayor Mary Verner.

West, a city employee, understands layoffs, he says, but he’s still frustrated by the loss of service.

It’s uncertain if West’s complaints have born fruit, but last Friday, Giannetto tells The Inlander, she was authorized to hire two more clerks.

To be clear, the clerks do far more than public records requests. They confirm arrest warrants and court documents — information vital to officers on duty, Giannetto says. Clerks also post runaway and missing persons reports and process gun sales, concealed weapons permits and fingerprint fees.

Often, Giannetto says, the department would fail to meet the mandated 72-hour turnaround on warrants and, she adds, “We had never passed a Washington State Patrol or FBI audit.”

The pay is often lower than similar clerk jobs in other city departments, which, coupled with crappy hours and high stress, led to the high turnover rate.

“I was thankful to have only lost five [positions],” Giannetto says.

Mike Smith, the Local 270 union rep that covers records workers, says there was little the union could do last year.

“Management still has the right to set staffing levels. We can do things as a union but we can’t dictate and we can’t scream about staffing levels,” Smith says.

Tim Ford, the Washington Assistant Attorney General who is the ombudsman for open government, says he’s not heard of any other records division in the state in such dire straits.

And while it is true that the department isn’t blowing any official deadline on fulfilling requests, Ford says a three- to four-month wait for records is unacceptable.

“You still have to try to provide the fullest assistance,” Ford says. “Our model rules say you should not use the same estimate for all requests. Because some requests are simple, and some are complex.”

Mayor Mary Verner says the records division was not targeted for staff reductions.

“Absolutely not. I personally have a strong commitment that we need to be responsive to records requests. They are a key piece to transparency and accountability in government,” she says.

In addition to authorizing the hire of two clerks, Verner says that in late February she convened a “project team” from staffers in various departments that handle records requests to brainstorm ideas for better handling requests.

In the meantime, Giannetto says she and her staff are working as hard as they can to keep from sliding deeper into the hole.

Article at the Inlander can be found here.

Too Many Teeth?

Police Guild’s Unfair Labor Practice complaint slams city for giving ombudsman independent investigatory and reporting powers.

The Spokane Police Guild’s filing with the state’s Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) alleges that the new powers of independence added to the city’s two year old Office of Police Ombudsman violate state labor law. A copy of the filing was obtained earlier today.

The August 20th complaint filed with the PERC specifically accuses the city of interfering with guild members’ collective bargaining rights and for refusing to engage in collective bargaining on a subject the Guild asserts is a mandatory matter of collective bargaining.

But this is where the three page complaint gets interesting because the subject matter that the Guild believes the recently adopted ordinance infringes upon is officer discipline–a function that under the literal terms of the offending ordinance is directly precluded with the following language: “The OPO [Office of Police Ombudsman] shall not have a role in any disciplinary matter.”

Apparently, the Guild believes the new powers given the office to initiate investigations independent of the police department, and issue reports on specific complaints independent of the police department, among to giving the office a role in officer discipline.

Indeed, there is much in the Guild’s complaint that drafters of the new ordinance and the citizen organizations who supported it, accept as true, including:

“Disciplinary procedures are a mandatory subject of bargaining,” and that: “Disciplinary procedures impact mandatory subjects of bargaining.”

But the allegations encompass, as a settled fact, that giving the OPO powers beyond the mere certification of internal police department investigations, goes over the line into officer discipline.

“The City made a unilateral change in its disciplinary procedures,” the complaint alleges, “by expanding the powers of the OPO and changing the requirements to which the OPO was subject, without providing the Guild an opportunity to bargain the change or the effects of the change, which constitutes a refusal to bargain with the Guild in violation of [state law.]”

In its complaint, the Guild asserts that “on or about June 14, 2010″–two weeks before the new ordinance was adopted–”the Guild demanded to bargain the changes in the ordinance that constituted mandatory subjects of bargaining and that impacted (sic) mandatory subjects of bargaining.”

In retrospect, though, the ordinance as it existed on June 14th was quite a bit weaker in terms of the OPO’s investigative powers, than the version of the ordinance that was adopted two weeks later. But, still, there were at least three clear clauses in the new ordinance that make clear that the chief, not the OPO, is solely in charge of discipline.

In many respects, the litany of the offending changes cited by the Guild could be taken from the literature of those who advocated for those changes, in that they reveal just how dominated the original ordinance was with language that rendered the OPO a mere bystander to the police department’s internal affairs (IA)investigations.

For example, the complaint charges: The [June 28th] ordinance permits the OPO to conduct an independent investigation if the OPO “is not satisfied with the decision of the mayor” [to accept an IA investigation as adequate]. Previously, the decision of the mayor was final and the OPO did not have authority to conduct an independent investigation.”

Although the complaint asserts that the OPO now has a role in officer discipline, it does not describe what that role is. Proponents of the new ordinance, including the Center for Justice, maintain that the independent reporting powers the office now has are duties that can be assigned to the office within the city’s managerial discretion, and because the OPO is directly precluded from being involved in officer discipline, there has been no infringement upon the collective bargaining agreement and/or state rules.

–CFJ

Latest News: Spokane Police Department

From Center for Justice, latest news on Spokane Police Department's fiasco in the making over the death of Otto Zehm last year. (full article here)

The Justice Department’s latest filing in the Zehm case offers a new look inside the pressure cooker that likely awaits the Spokane Police Department and its attorneys at trial later this year.

The 75-page filing by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Durkin featured in Thursday’s front page Spokesman-Review article, “Feds: Testimony Altered,” is now available here.

Tom Clouse’s story focuses on new assertions being made by the Justice Department that top Spokane police officials, including Assistant Chief Jim Nicks, are now expected to provide trial testimony that will directly dispute the Department’s early accounts of the altercation that lead to the death of Otto Zehm, a 36-year-old man suffering from schizophrenia. Clouse’s story highlights sections of the new filing that indicate Spokane police investigators set out to alter and even discredit eye witness testimony that contradicted the self-defense claims of defendant Karl Thompson, Jr., the Spokane police officer who first encountered Zehm in a north side convenience store the night of March 18, 2006.

Durkin’s brief describes Thompson’s encounter with Zehm as a “violent attack” by the police officer against the affable janitor whose last recorded words were, “I only wanted a Snickers.”

While We're On the Topic of the Spokane Police

More Spokane police officers could face criminal charges over the city’s handling of the fatal confrontation with unarmed janitor Otto Zehm, with newly filed court documents indicating a federal probe is continuing into potential obstructions of justice.

The new documents filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Durkin contain new details about the confrontation that suggest police and city officials have misled the public and others about what happened the night of March 18, 2006, when Zehm was beaten with a police baton, shocked with a Taser, and hogtied by a half-dozen officers before lapsing into a coma and dying two days later.

Full Story here.
The Center for Justice is representing Otto Zehm's mother and the estate of Otto Zehm in a civil trial and has full coverage on the new information released by United States Attorney's Office that suggests that city officials were involved behind the scenes to clear the Spokane police officers involved in the death of Otto Zehm three and a half years ago. Check out some other Center For Justice projects here including upcoming events like the Dirty Martinis for a Clean River Benefit.

Golden Goose Fund: Spokane Police Spent Millions Using Private Accounts

Spokane police bought $5.3 million in cars, travel, gasoline, weapons, training, clothing, electronics and office equipment over two decades, using a private account operated by the department’s Special Investigations Unit outside of public scrutiny and in violation of city and state laws. The Special Investigative Unit or SIU mainly funded these accounts from drug seizures. This information was revealed in accounting statements obtained by The Spokesman-Review through a public records request. Full Story here including documents, audio and interactive graphics. The State Auditor Report is available here.

Officer Faces Two Charges in Zehm Beating

Spokane Police Officer Indicted in Case of Death of Innocent Man

After nearly two years of deliberations, a federal grand jury in Spokane, Washington, indicted Spokane Police office Karl Thompson on two felony charges in connection with the March 18, 2006, violent encounter that resulted in the death of Otto Zehm, a 36-year-old janitor that suffered from mental illness. Zehm died after being beaten with a baton, tazed, and hogtied with a mask placed over his face. Turns out, Mr. Zehm had not even committed a crime. Otto Zehm stopped breathing after restrained by Police and died. The Center for Justice, a non-profit Spokane law firm, has a collection of news and video content regarding the case including the Indictment, information on the civil lawsuit pending, and other information. Both the civil and criminal cases will be worth watching on the topic of police accountability.

Spokane Police Officer Karl Thompson on Administrative Leave

The US Attorney’s Office announced this afternoon that the Federal Grand Jury has indicted Karl Thompson on Civil Rights violations of excessive force and making false statements during an investigation.

"I believe in seeking the truth and trust our criminal justice system to do just that," said Chief Kirkpatrick. 

Due to policy and procedure, Ofc. Thompson has been placed on temporary paid administrative leave. The next stage is governed by a city policy which requires the City Administrator to determine Ofc. Thompson’s status pending the outcome of the criminal trial.