New City Council president Nick Licata faced a large and often unruly crowd at last night’s public hearing on police accountability, which speaker after speaker used as an opportunity to vent about ugly run-ins and frustrating encounters with the SPD and its internal watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Accountability.

The hearing was supposed to be a rare chance for the public to provide some input on the Seattle Police Guild’s contract, which is up for renewal this year—the first-ever opportunity the public has had to weigh in on the guild’s contract before top-secret negotiations begin. Instead, it devolved into a one-way shouting match between some of Seattle’s loudest disgruntled citizens (among them: Paul Schell assailant Omar Tahiri and Kurt Cobain conspiracy theorist/videodiarist Richard Lee) and three members of the Public Safety committee: Licata, Jean Godden and Peter Steinbrueck.

The angry speakers could be broken down into two factions: Those who believed they had been mistreated or ill-served by the police department or OPA, and those who felt legislation Licata proposed that would give the OPA’s civilian oversight committee, the OPA Review Board (OPARB) new rights and legal protection did not go far enough.

In the latter camp were those like NAACP vice-president James Bible, who brandished a three-year-old nine-point proposal for “effective police accountability” supported by numerous local civil rights groups and demanded to know why all nine components weren’t on the table (among them: civilian intake personnel and subpoena power for OPARB); and community organizer Eddie Rye, Jr., who said City Council members had not done enough to “bring some sense” to the police guild’s contract. “We have two kinds of justice — one for police and one for the civilians,” Rye said. “We need real positive change and not an illusion of change.”

In the former camp were speakers like Garrett, who called the Seattle police “gangsters” and “terrorists,” and Michelle Jeffries, whose son, William P. Jeffries, was killed in 2002. “The attitude [of the police] was, he’s just another nigger,” Jeffries said. (Another speaker screamed obscenities at Licata, accusing him of “smirking” and shouting, “What the fuck?”)

Licata said today that he was not shocked by the overwhelmingly hostile tone of speakers’ comments. (That tone, I must add, pretty much drowned out speakers like OPARB member and NAACP president Sheley Seacrest and ACLU program director Julya Hampton, who were generally supportive of both the process and Licata’s legislation.)

“When you hold a public hearing on a topic like police accountability, you’re going to get a lot of people who just show up because they’re frustrated,” Licata says, “and rightfully so. If I was them, I’d be angry too.” However, Licata adds, there’s a differene between “having to deal with stuff from the outside and the inside…. I could easily get headlines by proposing stuff that gets shot down right away, but what would that accomplish? If you have a more systematic, gradual approach I think you’re going to get longer-term results.” Some of the suggestions in the nine-point proposal were “very reasonable,” he added, but several may be subject to contract negotiations, meaning they must be negotiated as part of the police guild’s contract, not legislated by the city council.