Chapter 1

• Jurisdiction: United States

Chapter 1 Public Corruption

Seattle's Organized Corruption

Our public guardians—law enforcement, judges, prosecutors, officeholders—can develop corrupt cultures. Normally, the motivational forces behind corruption are money, power, and a lack of accountability. Their victims often are members of the most vulnerable of our populations—racial minorities, the powerless, and lawbreakers willing to buy our public officials to protect themselves.

Famously, the "Operation Greylord" investigation (named after the wigs worn by British judges) resulted in fifteen judges in Cook County, Illinois, being convicted of taking bribes. For example, in 1993, one of the fifteen—Judge Thomas Maloney—was convicted of taking $100,000 in bribes to fix three murder cases.

In the 1970s, the New York Police Department had a culture that required officers to participate in bribery schemes. Officer Frank Serpico, who would not take part in the graft, broke the "blue wall of silence," and exposed the payoff system. This resulted in him getting shot in the face when his fellow officers would not come to his aid. Al Pacino played the role of Frank Serpico in the blockbuster movie Serpico.

Public corruption is not exclusive to large municipalities; it exists in small and medium-sized towns as well. For instance, in the small Texas town of Progreso, from 2004 until 2013, government officials who were all members of the same family used their positions to take bribes from both city and school district providers whom they were supposed to serve. The officials were eventually caught and convicted.¹

Later, we will explore how a law enforcement culture, unchecked by outside forces, can result in systemic police violence. But, for now, let's begin the journey with an up-close look at public corruption—the law enforcement officers who took bribes, the public officials who did nothing to stop the payoff system, those who paid the bribes, and the prosecutors who struggled to end the corruption.

The history of an organized police payoff system in Seattle, Washington, dates back to the economic boom times of the Klondike gold rush of 1897 and World War I, during which time gambling and prostitution in Seattle blossomed. Police collected bribe money to protect the illegal activities. During prohibition, police also took payoffs from speakeasies. Between World War I and World War II, there were somewhat successful campaigns to clean up vice in Seattle. However, prostitution and gambling in Seattle resumed and flourished with the economic expansion during and after World War II.

The city of Seattle had a Tolerance Policy that allowed vice and gambling from the 1940s until 1969. Every City Attorney held that the Tolerance Policy was legal, and no Seattle mayor ever objected to it. Even though gambling was illegal in Washington, the Seattle City Council passed ordinances that provided for the licensing of cardrooms, pinball machines, and punchboard gambling. This policy led to the Seattle Police Department (SPD) Vice Unit and patrol officers soliciting bribes from unlicensed gambling establishments that had spread throughout the city.

Police shakedowns in Seattle were widespread and systematic. Many of the targeted gambling houses were in vulnerable communities, such as the Central Area, populated mainly by Blacks, and the International District, with a minority population of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos. SPD officers also concentrated their solicitations of payoffs on downtown establishments that catered to gay and lesbian customers. Liquor board inspectors were also involved in the graft, telling the proprietors that either they would pay the police or their liquor licenses would be suspended.

Operators of taverns, gay bars, gambling joints, and others made regular payoffs to the police officers who patrolled their district. Those officers kept some of the bribe money and passed the remainder up the chain of command in the SPD.

Crusading on the Federal Level

The crusade to end public corruption in King County and beyond began at the federal level in January 1970 when Stan Pitkin, the newly appointed U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, convened a federal grand jury to look into police corruption and gambling. Over four months, the grand jury heard from numerous witnesses. Eventually, the grand jury indicted Seattle Police Assistant Chief Milford E. "Buzz" Cook, among others, for committing perjury before the grand jury.

In the summer of 1970, Cook was brought to trial for having committed perjury when he told the grand jury that he had no knowledge of law enforcement officers being paid by operators of gambling establishments, that he had no knowledge of anyone currently on the police force who participated in the payoffs, and that at no time had he received money, property, or anything of value from any person, directly or indirectly, who had been involved in gambling activities.

At the trial, Seattle police officers who had taken bribes and bar owners who had paid off the police testified to the full nature of the payoff system. The officers described how the money was collected, split, and then passed up through the chain of command in the SPD.

Cook was convicted of perjury on July 9, 1970.

Following the federal trial, the King County prosecuting attorney's office, led by Charles O. Carroll, filed charges against a few of the officers who had been implicated in the federal case. Among them was David Devine, who was charged with two counts of bribery on August 19, 1970, and who Doug Jewett and I would later prosecute.

Carroll had held the office of King County prosecutor for twenty-two years. Carroll filed the charges against Devine during a hotly contested Republican primary race with Christopher T. Bayley, a Harvard Law School graduate and a newcomer to politics. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Bayley had been an active-duty officer in the Navy. He started his legal career in 1966 as an associate in a large Seattle law firm, and he later served as a Deputy Attorney General and Chief of the Consumer Protection and Antitrust Division.

Both Bayley, the Republican candidate, and Ed Heavey, the Democratic candidate for the King County prosecutor's position, demanded that a King County grand jury be impaneled to investigate public corruption. Carroll's filing of charges against a few SPD officers undoubtedly was to give the appearance that he was taking action to end the corruption.

Crusading on the County Level

Chris Bayley won the Republican primary and then went on to beat Ed Heavey in the general election. Bayley's first major step after taking office was to call for a grand jury. He swiftly formed a team of prosecutors, which was led by Dick McBroom, to work with the grand jury. Among the team members were David Boerner, Chief of the Criminal Division of the King County Prosecutor's Office, and Doug Jewett.

The King County grand jury took testimony and deliberated for four months. At the end of July 1971, the grand jury issued indictments against eleven Seattle police officers. The grand jury issued a separate indictment on conspiracy charges against nineteen defendants, including high-level public officials, former King County Prosecutor Charles O. Carroll, Seattle City Councilman Charles M. Carroll, former Sheriff Jack Porter, and former Chief of the SPD Frank Ramon. Hundreds of other Seattle police officers were unnamed co-conspirators.

The grand jury continued until September, but it issued only one more indictment—this one against the members of the Washington State Liquor Control Board. These were high-level officials appointed directly by the governor of Washington State.

During the following month, the crusade on the county level was temporarily halted. Judge William Cole from Kittitas County was brought in to hear motions relating to the indictments because King County judges had too many connections with the defendants who had been charged. Cole dismissed the conspiracy indictment, holding that the state's conspiracy statute was unconstitutional and that a new law on grand juries passed on May 10, 1971, rendered null and void any decisions made by the King County grand jury after that date. Cole's decision was appealed to the Washington Supreme Court, where Chris Bayley argued in favor of reinstating the indictments.

Eventually, in October 1972, the Washington Supreme Court remanded the indictments to King County Superior Court for trial. By the fall of 1972, the original grand jury team in the prosecutor's office had been disbanded. Tragically, Dick McBroom, who had led the grand jury team, passed away from a blood disease at the age of twenty-nine.

King County Courthouse

Chris Bayley formed a Special Trial Section to prosecute both the payoff cases that Charles O. Carroll had filed, including the David Devine case and the King County grand jury indictments. Bayley selected deputy prosecutors from the Criminal Division—Jack Cunningham, Marco Magnano, Jim Miller, and me—to be members of that section. Jack was the head of the section.

The Special Trial Section moved away from others in the Criminal Division. The Criminal Division's main offices at the time that I began there were located on the south side of the fifth floor of the King County Courthouse. Those of us on the Special Trial Section moved out of those offices to offices along the west side of the fifth floor. We had to be moved because, among other reasons, the grand jury transcripts that were part of our source materials were secret.

When I was assigned to the Special Trial Section, I was twenty-seven years old and what we would later call a "baby deputy prosecutor"—someone with little experience as a prosecutor. I never set out to be a prosecutor; my goal was to be like my father. He was a prominent lawyer, and although he was officed in a three-person law firm, he was a sole practitioner. He had a general practice, except that he would have nothing...