Usually we don't hear about Seattle cops acting like fools unless there's a high-profile complaint or the video is leaked to the press (ahem). But inside the US Department of Justice report on the Seattle Police Department released last Friday are several case profiles. Here are three examples of excessive force in which officers failed to deescalate a situation for a minor law violation:

For example, in one incident, an officer viewed a man exhibiting irrational behavior. His stressed mental state was apparent. He was standing in the street yelling at traffic lights while holding a stuffed animal. He was sweating, his eyes were bulging, and he was talking incoherently. One officer ordered the man to move to the side of the road. The man did not respond and began to walk away, at which point the officer sprayed the man without warning with a powerful form of pepper spray. When the officer did catch up to the man, the officer reported that the man “balled up his fist.” In response, the officer struck the man on the arm with a baton. The man then turned and ran. At this point, four officers chased down the man and administered between 14 to 18 punches for between 15-30 seconds, five to seven elbow or knee strikes, and approximately three baton strikes, with one officer additionally striking the man on the thigh with his baton because he was reportedly attempting to kick the officers. Ultimately, they arrested the man on the minor charges of pedestrian interference and obstruction.

Here's another one:

In another incident, two officers used excessive force against a small woman who had just stolen a purse from a department store. When the woman tried to walk away from the officers, one officer grabbed her left wrist and the second officer grabbed her right arm. They bent her arms behind her back to try to place handcuffs on her, and the woman began to twist her body in an attempt to escape. Even though each officer had control of one of the woman’s arms, one officer sprayed three to four bursts of OC spray to the woman’s face and additionally delivered two to three punches to the woman’s rib cage in response to the woman’s twisting of her body and attempts to push herself up from the ground where she was pinned under the officer’s knee.

And yet another:

For example, in one incident, two officers went to the home of a man that they knew was experiencing a mental health crisis. The officers chose not to enlist the assistance of the Crisis Intervention Team (“CIT”), which would have had the requisite expertise for handling an individual experiencing distress. In addition, the individual’s acute mental state was apparent from the outset of the contact. When the man answered the door, his eyes were bulging and he appeared disoriented. The officers explained to him that he was under arrest for an outstanding warrant, and one officer grabbed the man’s left arm in an attempt to handcuff him. The man immediately pulled away and refused to cooperate. In response, one officer swept the man’s left leg with his foot and “placed him on the ground” to gain leverage. The officer then got on top of the man’s body. After the man attempted to get up several times, the officer deployed his Electronically Controlled Weapon (“ECW,” a.k.a. TASER) once into the man’s left leg, and administered two additional ECW cycles on the man’s upper back. At this point, the man began to crawl down the hallway, with both officers on top of his back. One officer delivered two strikes to the man’s face with his right elbow because he reportedly feared that the man was trying to grab his firearm. The second officer struck the man several times in the back and hip area with a closed fist, and kneed him in the lower back. In the course of this incident, the man began to vomit, stopped breathing, and suffered a brain injury that has since left him hospitalized. Had the CIT team been used, or had the officers not escalated the situation, this outcome could have been averted.

Plenty more where that came from can be found right here.