Chapter 8

• Jurisdiction: United States

Chapter 8 Police Officer-Involved Violence and Deaths

The first chapter of this book was devoted to public corruption. The police culture in Seattle allowed the payoff system to become an acceptable norm. Police failed to police the police. It took outside forces to end the corruption. Now, we return to police culture, specifically a culture sullied by unwarranted police officer-involved violence and deaths. This longtime, nationwide problem has proven to be one of the most difficult to fix. This chapter examines cases involving police officer-involved violence and death, and it offers road maps to ending systemic police violence by studying past successful and failed efforts to end unjustified police violence.

John T. Williams

On August 30, 2010, at about 4 p.m., Seattle Police Officer Ian Birk aimed his service weapon at John T. Williams and fired it five times, hitting Williams four times and killing him. Williams, fifty years old, was a Native American, a member of the Nuu-chah-nulth tribe. According to Williams' family, he was a seventh-generation woodcarver. Williams was an extremely talented artist. Williams had hearing deficiencies, and he had battled problems with alcohol much of his adult life.

Birk, age twenty-seven, had been on the Seattle Police Department for approximately two years. Birk was driving his patrol car in downtown Seattle at Boren Avenue and Howell Street when he spotted woodcarver Williams carrying a piece of wood and a short three-inch knife.

Officer Birk got out of the patrol car and followed Williams onto a sidewalk. Birk shouted at Williams to get his attention—"Hey...Hey," "Hey...Hey!" "Put the knife down," "Put the knife down." When Williams did not respond, Birk fired at him. Autopsy findings were that Williams had been shot in the right side of his body, and, therefore, he had been facing away from Birk when he was shot. Audio and video from Birk's patrol car showed that it took about four seconds from the time Birk first told Williams to drop the knife to the first gunshot. No evidence existed that Williams ever came toward the officer, and when the knife was recovered from Williams, it was in a closed position.

In 2010, the King County Charter stated, "An inquest shall be held to investigate the causes and circumstances of any death involving a member of the law enforcement agency of the county in the performance of the member's duties." Therefore, an inquest was scheduled to carry out the Charter's mandate that there be a public airing of what happened in any death involving a law enforcement officer.

An inquest is not a trial, and no judgment of fault or liability is entered. Instead, when an inquest ends, the jurors answer interrogatories (questions) in writing. However, an inquest does have the trappings of a trial: a judge presides, witnesses are called to testify and are subject to cross-examination, the rules of evidence are followed. The prosecutor's role at the inquest is that of the presenter of facts and not an advocate for culpability. The family of the deceased may be represented and can call witnesses.

An inquest into the killing of Williams was conducted in the courtroom of Judge Arthur Chapman in the King County Courthouse. Birk testified that Williams did not put his hands up and did not show signs of compliance with the commands to drop the knife. Birk said he had no alternative but to defend himself.

The jury deliberated over twelve questions posed in the court's instructions to the jury. The two critical questions regarding Birk's culpability and the answers given were as follows:

Question 10: Did Officer Birk believe that John T. Williams posed an imminent threat of serious physical harm to Officer Birk at the time Officer Birk fired his weapon? YES: 4. NO: 0. UNKNOWN: 4.
Question 11: Based on the information available at the time Officer Birk fired his weapon, did John T. Williams then pose an imminent threat of serious physical harm to Officer Birk? YES: 1. NO: 4. UNKNOWN: 3.

The next decision rested with the King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg who had and still has the responsibility to determine whether criminal charges should be filed in a case in which a death involved a law enforcement officer.

Because Birk's shooting of Williams could be a crime against a person, the prosecutor's standard required, in essence, that charges be filed when the admissible evidence, considered with the foreseeable defense of justifiable homicide by a police officer, would warrant a conviction by a reasonable and objective fact finder—judge or jury.

At the time of the Williams case, the jury instruction on justification by a police officer stated: "A peace officer shall not be held criminally liable for using deadly force without malice and with a good faith belief that such act is justifiable." Washington's pattern jury instruction defines "malice" as "an evil intent, wish, or design to vex, annoy, or injure another person."

After Prosecutor Satterberg reviewed the evidence and the inquest jurors' responses to the interrogatories, he told the media that the shooting was "troubling." He said that the "obvious and legally available defenses" were chiefly that there was no evidence indicating Birk acted with malice toward Williams, as was required by state law. Given the "malice" requirement, Satterberg concluded that a jury would have no choice if asked to convict Birk. Satterberg said, "A jury would be compelled to find Officer Birk not guilty because there is no evidence to show malice." He added, "There's no evidence to refute Officer Birk's claim that he acted in good faith."

In the wake of the Williams inquest and other cases involving police violence, Satterberg led a movement to remove "malice" from Washington's law on justification by a police officer.

Should charges have been filed? An argument in favor of filing charges is that this was a triable case under the prosecutor's filing standards. Birk shot a man who was armed only with a small knife and was facing away from him at the time Birk shot him, and Birk shot him four seconds from the time he first told Williams to drop the knife. A prosecutor could conclude that this is sufficient evidence to meet the filing standard that a jury would be justified in finding that Birk had an evil design to injure Williams.

However, the inquest's jury's answer to the question about whether Birk believed Williams posed an imminent threat of serious physical harm to Birk at the time he fired his weapon suggests that a jury at the trial of Birk, after considering the evidence, including Birk's testimony that he acted in good faith, could conclude he was acting in good faith and not out of malice when he shot Williams. Four jurors responded to the question that they thought Birk was in fear and four responded that they did not know.

Lembhard G. Howell, an attorney who has represented families in King County inquests since I first entered the courthouse in the late 1960s and is still practicing law, called Dan Satterberg's decision in the Williams case "gutless." Former King County Prosecutor Chris Bayley said that Lem Howell was entitled to his opinion, and Chris acknowledged Dan Satterberg's efforts to remove the "malice" requirement from state law.

The public airing of what happened to John T. Williams did have some constructive results. The Seattle Police Department's Firearms Review Board decided that the shooting was "unjustified." In August 2011, the City of Seattle settled with the Williams family for $1.5 million. Seattle's Mayor declared February 27, 2011, to be "John T. Williams Day." And, in 2012, a thirty-four-foot totem pole honoring Williams was erected at the Seattle Center. But, above all, the inquest's transparency about what happened motivated the community to demand a wide-ranging federal investigation of SPD's use of deadly force.

"Criminal Means"

I first became aware of inquests forty years before the John T. Williams case, and it was a dramatic introduction to cases involving police violence and inquests. In 1970, when I entered the Presiding Department, which is a vast courtroom on the ninth floor of the King County Courthouse, it was packed solid with members of the Black community. They were assembled there because Seattle Police officer John Hannah had shot and killed Larry Ward, a Black man.

On May 15, 1970, Officer Hannah shot and killed Ward as he fled from police after attempting to light a bomb fuse at Hardcastle Realty at 23rd Avenue and Union Street in the Central Area. Police had been surveilling the property, expecting to apprehend a Black Panther who was reportedly planning a bombing. The Black Panther Party was an African-American revolutionary organization initially formed in 1966 to patrol Black neighborhoods and protect residents from police brutality.

Larry Ward and Alfred Rudolph "Alfie" Burnett had arrived at the scene in a car driven by Burnett. Burnett was a police informant who had pending charges for armed robbery. Ward was a Vietnam veteran...