Seattle Cops Suing Over DOJ Use-of-Force Rules

More than 100 cops in Seattle
filed a lawsuit yesterday against the Department of Justice
(DOJ), Attorney General Eric Holder, the local U.S. attorney, and
Seattle’s recently elected mayor, Ed Murray. They allege that new
use-of-force rules, instituted after the DOJ found a pattern or
practice of the excessive use of force, are unrealistic and
paralyze officers in the street, causing a “bold, new disregard for
police authority in the streets of Seattle.”

As a consequence, the lawsuit alleges, cops are reluctant to do
proactive police work and hesitant about responding to back up
calls, worrying that they could fact disciplinary charges. The new
use-of-force rules call for physical coercion to be a last resort
for police and tell cops to use the minimum amount of force
necessary to do their jobs. What cops do before using force, for
example escalating or trying to de-escalate a situation, is also
taken into account to judge whether the use of force was
justified.

Given the admission in the lawsuit that cops aren’t doing their
jobs because they’re not sure they can follow the rules, perhaps
its unsurprising the Seattle police union did not endorse it. Most
of the officers in the lawsuit are from the North precinct. When
they tried to collect signatures elsewhere in the department, they
were stopped by their commanders, and
the Seattle Times reports:

Ron Smith, [police union] SPOG’s president, said of the officers
who filed suit, “I knew they were unhappy. I knew they were
contemplating this action. I met with them to hear their concerns
at their request, back in March. I didn’t hear back from them
again.”

Smith said he gave the group “a conduit” to the Community Police
Commission, created as part of the consent decree, and that they
shared their concerns with the commission.

“I assumed they were going to get the policy changed in the
areas of concern,” Smith said. “I would like to say the policy is
overly broad, poorly written and somewhat confusing. However, I
believe the policy could have been changed with collaboration with
the Community Police Commission.”

The union doesn’t necessarily back the rules imposed after the
DOJ found widespread use-of-force abuse in the department, it just
opposes getting them changed via lawsuit. It would be bad press. As
the mayor pointed out, Seattle police have these mandated rules “in
part because of a disturbing pattern of unnecessary use of force
and other forms of unconstitutional policing.”

The cops filing suit believe they have the Constitution on their
side, because the Constitution, according to the lawsuit, “does not
permit judges, or in this case DOJ and its Monitor, to look back in
perfect hindsight, from the safety of their chambers or offices, to
second-guess what patrol officers actually faced at the moment and
know from real experience on the streets,”

The lawsuit’s lead plaintiff, an Officer Robert Mahoney, was
suspended without pay for 30 days in 2009 after being accused of
forcibly kissing an 18-year-old cadet. He denied kissing her and
was suspended for unprofessional conduct. The 30-day unpaid
suspension was apparently the toughest disciplinary action the
police chief could’ve taken short of termination. Mahoney was also
found by the police chief to have been dishonest, which could have
resulted in termination. Instead, a civil service commission threw
out that charge even as it upheld the finding of unprofessional
conduct.