Jolt
Afternoon Jolt: Another Panhandling Punching Incident?
Another potential jolt for the embattled Seattle Police Department: On KIRO (FM 97.3) radio this past Friday, (and again this morning
) [Dave] Ross and Burbank Show co-host Luke Burbank related a rattling story about a scene his girlfriend, KUOW reporter Vanessa Romo, had witnessed the previous night. Outside the Lowe's on Rainier Ave. S., police had chased down an apparently homeless man who was jaywalking across the street, tackled him onto the sidewalk, and punched him several times in the head.
According to Romo, whom Burbank recorded retelling what happened later that night, "They tackle him, and his face hits the pavement and sort of bounces off the pavement, and they're both on top of him and the other guy ships out plastic cuffs and cuffs him. And suddenly the dark-haired, stocky guy starts punching him in the face… and suddenly the guy's lying perfectly still" on the sidewalk. It took the man seven minutes or so, Romo recalled, to start moving and moaning gently.
Afterward, when Romo and Burbank asked how to file a report about what Romo had seen, an SPD sergeant was, according to Burbank's account, belligerent and "spittin' mad," telling them "they did not punch him," and, when Romo insisted that they had, changing his story.
"He goes, 'I would have punched him too, because he spit on them,'" Burbank recalled the officer saying. "If i spit on you, would you punch me?'---which is a weird question to have posed [to you] by someone in an SPD uniform."
The incident as described is starkly similar to another incident, infamously caught on camera, in which an SPD officer who had pulled over a teenage girl for jaywalking on nearby Martin Luther King Way S. punched the girl in the face as a bystander taped the event with a cell-phone camera. Which raised a question for Burbank: How often does this happen when no one---no citizens with cell-phone cameras, no witnesses who happen to be radio reporters---are present?
"The reason this is so upsetting to me is because I can't shake the feeling that this kind of stuff goes on all the time," Burbank said. "This guy's ... going to stumble out into the rain from the King County jail, his face and head are going to be mashed up, and he's just going to go back to wherever it was he was sitting with his alcohol and he's just going to think, 'This is my lot in life. I'm the kind of guy who just gets roughed up by the cops a couple of times a year,' and he's not going to file a [police] report."
KIRO has filed a records request for the police report in the incident---which they say SPD has told them was not related to an outstanding warrant or any other imminent threat---and city council member Nick Licata has expressed an interest in investigating what happened, according to a Licata staffer.
We have a call in to Burbank and will follow up with SPD tomorrow.
According to Romo, whom Burbank recorded retelling what happened later that night, "They tackle him, and his face hits the pavement and sort of bounces off the pavement, and they're both on top of him and the other guy ships out plastic cuffs and cuffs him. And suddenly the dark-haired, stocky guy starts punching him in the face… and suddenly the guy's lying perfectly still" on the sidewalk. It took the man seven minutes or so, Romo recalled, to start moving and moaning gently.
Afterward, when Romo and Burbank asked how to file a report about what Romo had seen, an SPD sergeant was, according to Burbank's account, belligerent and "spittin' mad," telling them "they did not punch him," and, when Romo insisted that they had, changing his story.
"He goes, 'I would have punched him too, because he spit on them,'" Burbank recalled the officer saying. "If i spit on you, would you punch me?'---which is a weird question to have posed [to you] by someone in an SPD uniform."
The incident as described is starkly similar to another incident, infamously caught on camera, in which an SPD officer who had pulled over a teenage girl for jaywalking on nearby Martin Luther King Way S. punched the girl in the face as a bystander taped the event with a cell-phone camera. Which raised a question for Burbank: How often does this happen when no one---no citizens with cell-phone cameras, no witnesses who happen to be radio reporters---are present?
"The reason this is so upsetting to me is because I can't shake the feeling that this kind of stuff goes on all the time," Burbank said. "This guy's ... going to stumble out into the rain from the King County jail, his face and head are going to be mashed up, and he's just going to go back to wherever it was he was sitting with his alcohol and he's just going to think, 'This is my lot in life. I'm the kind of guy who just gets roughed up by the cops a couple of times a year,' and he's not going to file a [police] report."
KIRO has filed a records request for the police report in the incident---which they say SPD has told them was not related to an outstanding warrant or any other imminent threat---and city council member Nick Licata has expressed an interest in investigating what happened, according to a Licata staffer.
We have a call in to Burbank and will follow up with SPD tomorrow.
