Although I have no illusions that anything will come of this, I’ll cry out from the wilderness once again, if for nothing else, that some call for context and fairness in Seattle media exist in some form exist on the record. I’m talking about yet another report from a local news media regarding the fraudulent DOJ consent decree foisted upon Seattle’s police department.
To briefly review. The DOJ came to Seattle to find use-of-force and bias misconduct on the part of Seattle’s police officers, and what do you know, they found it. In fact, they found a lot of it—enough to implement a consent decree. After an investigation where the DOJ—to this day—refuses to release its methodology, they asserted that, they found the SPD violated suspect’s constitutional rights a statistically absurd twenty percent of the time.
Seattle University criminal justice professor, Matthew J. Hickman, a former DOJ statistician, conducted his own research based upon much more data than the DOJ used. Hickman found the DOJ findings to be in such error that he advised Seattle to call the DOJ’s bluff and demand an apology. The implementation of the consent decree was based upon the above-descried corrupt findings.
Now, let’s get to the point at hand. This morning, I was listening to the John Carlson Show on KVI Radio. During an ABC news broadcast announcing the swearing in of Seattle’s new police chief, Kathleen O’Keefe, the reporter referred to the chief facing the challenge of heading a police department under a DOJ consent decree for, excessive force and bias policing issues.
Once again, the public is left with the impression that the consent decree was arrived at through a process of integrity when it was anything but. No caveat or context was provided to indicate the extreme bias with which the DOJ instituted the consent decree against the men and women of the Seattle Police Department.
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