Lakewood police officer Skeeter Timothy Manos was arrested today and charged with ten federal felonies for allegedly embezzling more than $150,000 from a police fund meant to benefit the families of four Lakewood Police Officers who were fatally gunned down at a Lakewood coffee shop in November 2009. Manos, who was arrested today at Lakewood's City Hall, served as the Treasurer of the Lakewood Police Independent Guild, which managed the fund.

“This is a sad day for our community,” said U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan in a statement. “These acts betrayed the memory of our fallen heroes, their families, fellow officers and all who supported the fund. I commend the Lakewood Police and the Pierce County Prosecutor for coming forward promptly with evidence of these crimes.”

According to the criminal complaint, Manos set up a secret bank account—separate from the primary account established by the Lakewood Police Independent Guild—for donations to the Lakewood Police Officers’ families. From there, Manos allegedly diverted $151,000 from the $3.2 million in public donations for the families.

Manos is accused of spending $120,000 on items at Costco and Home Depot, and on airplane tickets to Las Vegas, Nevada. While in Vegas, investigators say that Manos made cash withdrawals at various casinos, including the Bellagio, in April 2010. He also allegedly took out cash at the Hawks Prairie Casino in December 2010.

“While I am disappointed that such a serious breach of trust was committed, I am very proud that the Lakewood Police Department was able to ‘police’ its own," said Lakewood City Manager Andrew E. Neiditz. "The investigation was initiated by a Lakewood officer, and the Chief responded decisively in referring the matter on to prosecutors without delay.”

The case is being investigated by the FBI with the assistance of the Lakewood Police Department and the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office. Manos will make his initial appearance on the charges in U.S. District Court in Tacoma at 2:30 today.

At 3rd and Pike, of course:

On 1/31/12 at approximately 2:45 p.m., a woman called 911 and reported that she had been stabbed by another woman while riding a Metro bus... It is unknown what precipitated the assault. The suspect will be booked into King County Jail for Investigation of Assault.

When Star Trek obsessive Tony Alleyne was separated from his wife, he embraced the chance to turn their old flat into a recreation of the inside of the Starship Enterprise. But the 58-year-old's painstaking efforts may have been for nothing. His ex-wife wants to sell up - and she intends to offer buyers a more conventional looking home.

Mr Alleyne has spent the last ten years transforming the one-bedroom property into a sci-fi fantasy, with a computerised flight deck, flashing lights and even 'transporters'.

He is devastated by the news that his ex-wife Georgina wants to sell the flat in Hinckley, Leicestershire, where he has been living by himself since their break-up.

What will happen if we continue to allow straight people to get married and then divorce? It's a slippery slope. Before you know it straight people will be getting divorced and engaging in bestiality, or worse! This aggression cannot stand. Who else's dreams will straight people ruin through divorce?

h/t: Clyde Peterson!

Blogger Ian Awesome interviews former Seattle Police Department chief Norm Stamper:

I would offer this view to any chief including Diaz. If you do not conceive of your police department as belonging to the community, then you have the wrong conception of policing a free and democratic society. I think it’s very important the police take the view that they are the junior partners of the communities they serve. If there’s a senior partner in that relationship, it is the community by at least a ratio 51/49, and that isn’t just the business community or blind supporters of the police department, but also critics and those who have been on the receiving end of oppressive police action.

Read the whole interview.

A prison break worthy of the movies: Prisoner is being taken to hospital by two prison guards, prisoner's friend is waiting outside of the emergency room with a gun, friend pulls gun on the two prison guards and the prisoner (and his accomplish, who "possibly" has a Scottish accent) run away. According to BBC: "Police said they have begun a manhunt for both men."

Posted by news intern Marley Zeno

On Saturday, January 14 at around 2:00 a.m. security outside a bar in Fremont flagged down police to investigate an alleged knife attack.

According the police report, security for a bar located at N 36th Street and Dayton Avenue N told police that a man had pulled a knife on another man at the bar. Officers spoke to the man who was allegedly assaulted, who said he was simply standing on the sidewalk when a man—a complete stranger—ran into him. He asked the man what he was doing and the the man "responded by pulling a knife out and flipping the blade open," according to the police report. The knife-wielding man then allegedly "took a swing" at the victim with his knife. Luckily, the victim avoided getting cut and managed to push his attacker to the ground and keep him at the scene until police arrived.

Officers observed the knife-carrying assailant "standing on the sidewalk apparently yelling things at people." Police took away his knife and arrested him. When the man was in the police car on the way to the North Precinct, he said that "at least 7 males had been harassing him, and then 'got physical' with him." He also said that the men were "much larger then he was, and he was afraid for his life." He claimed that he used his knife in self defense. The officer asked the man why he hadn't walked away or called 911 and "he did not have an answer."

In a nightclub drama that reads like a gayed-up version of 21 Jump Street, three unidentified off-duty officers have filed a police report against security personnel at Neighbours Nightclub, claiming that security guards yelled at them and assaulted them in the alley behind the club "but they didn't know why." Meanwhile, a security guard for the club claims that the situation got out of hand after one of the officers shoved him and called him a know-nothing Mexican.

This claim demands sleuthing! Or at the very least, repeating!

The drama begins on Monday, January 16 at 1:00 a.m. when police were called to the alley entrance of Neighbours nightclub—aka the gayest back door west of Basic Plumbing—to investigate a (presumably) gay scuffle, or what I like to call a "fox trot." There, responding officers discovered that three of the individuals involved in the fight were off-duty police officers who were "visibly intoxicated" and covered in dirt, according to the police report. As the off-duty officers explained to responding officers, they were just hangin' in the alley behind Neighbours when security for the club started getting aggressive.

However, the main security guard involved in the confrontation told police that Officer 3 had started the disturbance by pushing his elbow into the guard's chest. Neighbours security also claims that before the pushing started, either Officer 2 or 3 stated for some inexplicable reason, "You don't know anything about the law, Mexican."

Neighbours has surveillance video of the incident (but no audio).

The police report states that the video shows Officer 2 and Officer 3 walking north in the alley before the confrontation. Another man—identified in the report only as a business acquaintance of Neighbours's security guards—runs ahead of them. He reaches the security guards stationed at Neighbours's entrance and gestures at the two approaching men. Once he has security's attention, the man returns to Officer 2 and appears to scream in Officer 2's face for unknown reasons. "You can see arm and shoulder movement near [Officer 2's] face," the report notes. In turn, the officer uses his arm to push the dude a few feet back—"this was not a hard violent push but seemed to be used to gain separation between the two," notes the report.

Suddenly, one of the security guys in a beefy SECURITY shirt approaches the off-duty officers, says a few words, and then "quickly leg sweeps [Officer 3] slamming him to the ground."

Continue reading »

See a list of stolen equipment right here and be on the lookout.

Citizens who accuse a Seattle police officer of misconduct and are unsatisfied with the results of an internal investigation should be allowed to appeal to a citizen oversight panel, according to a report today issued by the Seattle Human Rights Commission.

Currently, citizens file a complaint with the Seattle Police Department's internal Office of Professional Accountability (OPA). But seen by many as a mechanism to acquit officers of wrongdoing, the OPA uses a byzantine system for the disposition of cases that typically leaves officers without any record of wrongdoing even if investigators found the officers acted improperly. That current misconduct complaint system "confuses rather than illuminates an investigation’s final conclusion," according to the recent report by the US Department of Justice on unconstitutional Seattle policing.

Explaining that the "Seattle Police Chief is not a neutral or impartial decision-maker," the human rights commission report says that lacking an neutral arbiter "violates basic tenets of due process. As such, the current structure violates human rights requirements." The commission recommended in its 10-page report that OPA's oversight panel—the Office of Professional Accountability Review Board, or OPARB)—be empowered by the city council to "function as an appeals panel for citizens who are not satisfied with the outcome of police misconduct investigations" and "to independently investigate appealed cases and recommend discipline."

The commission added two more recommendations: (1) creating a Community Problem Oriented Policing strategy that involves cops, city hall, and citizens; and (2) requiring the SPD to publish all incidents involving the use of force or discharging a firearm. Further, the commission seeks "an expert panel to determine whether there is a disproportionate impact on communities of color or other vulnerable populations within Seattle."

A former cop himself, Seattle City Council member Tim Burgess has authored an essay about shifting the philosophy of the Seattle Police Department's "values and foundational principles of Constitutional policing." You should read the entire essay. It responds partly to the recent US Department of Justice report that accuses Seattle cops of violating the Constitution with regular acts of excessive force. Burgess also attempts to distance himself from the SPD's malfeasance during his tenure as chair of the council's Public Safety Committee. (To Burgess's credit, his committee issued the most concrete and specific reform proposals to police brass in response to a rash of misconduct cases.)

What does Burgess suggest? Training overhauls and a carefully crafted program of management and oversight, for starters, along with stronger crime-tracking techniques. It's a thoughtful essay. But Burgess reveals he hasn't given up on his passion for civility laws that target poor people on the street (which could manifest in more of the sort of profiling that exacerbates the department's existing problems with nonwhite suspects and the poor). Among other things, Burgess calls to "focus on the policing of those micro-places where crime is concentrated and anchored" and "strategies to prevent crime, especially street crime and disorder..." This harks back to Burgess's 2010 effort to pass a bill to further penalize aggressive panhandling—a measure that failed after a mayoral veto. To the extent that Burgess, who has his eye on the mayor's office, wants to repeat this element of his agenda, he'd be wise to focus on street disorder that constitutes actual crime (forucs on assaults, thefts, and other criminal activity), not street disorder that is merely annoying.

The Seattle police officer accused of stealing drugs instead of logging it as case evidence was hospitalized this morning for an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Via Komo:

Police spokesman Sean Whitcomb confirmed Rick F. Nelson, 50, of Issaquah was arrested early Thursday morning. Jail records indicate the officer was booked into jail, then released within a half hour.

Approximately six hours after he was released, Nelson was found shot, according to sources. He was taken to Harborview Medical Center where he was listed in critical condition.

Last night, a veteran South Precinct police officer was booked and released for allegedly stealing crack (and possibly other drugs) out of a Seattle Police Department evidence room and keeping it for his own person use, according to multiple sources familiar with the case. Police Chief John Diaz was expected to discuss the case at a scheduled noon press conference but that presser has now been postponed until sometime later today.

Regardless of how Diaz has decided to officially discipline the officer (who has reportedly resigned from SPD), there's a good possibility he will also face felony drug charges. Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, says he expects the case to be referred to his office within the next few days. I'll update when I know more.

I just got a call from Detective Renee Witt, a charming member of the Seattle Police Department's communications team, personally inviting me to a special noon press conference at police HQ today. However, Witt refused to tell me the purpose of the goddamn presser.

My first thought was: This is a trap. Then: This is an intervention. Best case scenario, I've been invited to the Chief's surprise birthday party (SURPRISE!).

But as much as I'd love to eat out the Chief's birthday cake or be admonished by finger-wagging cops for wasting my life as a jaywalking pot-smoking blogger, the reason for the mysterious noon presser appears to be much more mundane—sources familiar with the incident say that Diaz will announce disciplinary action taken against a SPD officer for a serious (as yet unidentified) transgression, which was discovered and reported by another SPD officer. The offending officer has also reportedly resigned.

Anyway, I'm still kinda hoping there will be cake.

Since last June, the Portland Police Bureau has been under investigation by the Department of Justice for "a pattern or practice of excessive force," particularly against people living with mental illness. Sound familiar? This next part won't.

Unlike here in Seattle, the DOJ has yet to report its findings Portland cops' use of force. Despite that, yesterday the Portland bureau announced that its changing how officers respond to and process use-of-force cases.

From The Portland Mercury:

Starting January 15, a police sergeant will show up and immediately interview the officer(s) involved and any witnesses, and take photos. And then the sergeant will write an "after-action" report that includes a recommendation on whether the cop who used force did so according to the bureau's rules. Under current procedures, only the officer who uses force will write an immediate report, with a sergeant reviewing that document later.

The Mercury is quick to point out that there's no guarantee this will be an effective solution to Portland's (real or perceived) use-of-force problem, and Portland's cop union is already gearing up to challenge the changes (as is the case here in Seattle). But it's refreshing to see a department jumping to address the problem instead of following Seattle's example and questioning the validity of the DOJ's findings (although, to be fair, following a little pitchfork prompting, Seattle's Chief Diaz says he's now committed to reforming SPD).