Report: Officers used excessive force at protests

A Seattle police officer who slammed a protester’s head to the ground, another who punched a demonstrator in the head a half dozen times and a third officer who put his knee on the necks of two looting suspects violated policies against using excessive force, an independent agency tasked with investigating police misconduct said Friday.

But an officer who peppersprayed a protester, hitting a nearby child in the face, did not intentionally target the boy or his father, so no violations of policy took place, the Office of Police Accountability said.

Protests erupted in Seattle and across the country this summer after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer. Since May, the office has received 19,000 complaints about police misconduct during protests. The office has released two batches of reports, with the latest made public Friday. The decision about the incident involving the child was released in September.

The Seattle police chief has not made any decisions about disciplining the officers, said Mark Jamieson, a police spokesman. The officers were not named in the reports because the union contract with the city prohibits disclosing their identities.

Also under the contract, when the Office of Police Accountability believes an officer committed a crime, the office sends the case to the Seattle Police Department and asks for a criminal investigation — a system that the office’s director, Andrew Myerberg, said is flawed because of a possible conflict of interest.

Myerberg said his office has referred three or four cases from the protests to the Seattle police for a criminal investigation, but those reports have not been made public yet. None of the officers in the newly released reports face criminal charges, he said.

Nancy Talner, the ACLU of Washington’s senior staff attorney, said the investigations are a start, but more work must be done to ensure bad behavior is changed.

“Incidents like these must immediately spark meaningful system changes, including requiring policies that prevent unnecessary use of force and demanding compliance at every step of an officer’s career,” she said.

The Seattle Community Police Commission said disciplinary decisions for officers who used excessive force are being made under a flawed system created by the current police contracts. The contacts make it hard to fire a problem officer, allow guilty officers to appeal their case to a backlogged arbitration system, and keep the disciplinary cases closed to the public, the commission said.

The Seattle Police Officers Guild has said it was appalled by the death of Floyd in Minneapolis and has pledged to work on improving police- community relations.