Rat search's link to neo-Nazi

Seattle police officers -- some with guns drawn -- herded her and the other residents of the low-rent rooming house in Seattle's Roosevelt neighborhood into a vacant room and ordered them to sit on the floor, Sogga said. It was only then that they learned why: rats.

Police held the four, some of whom were not dressed, incommunicado. They never arrested or charged anyone. All the while, police ransacked their rooms all in the name of a public-health inspection for rodents, she said.

"It was pretty scary," Sogga said. "It was so intense -- we were all looking at each other saying, 'What's going to happen next?' "

Sogga, who says she's never been in trouble with the police, and the three others from the house, including a woman with multiple sclerosis and a young artist, sued, asserting that police had violated their constitutional rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.

They lost at the trial court and appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is expected to rule on the case later this year.

Yesterday, more than five years after the raid, three judges from the appeals court heard Seattle and King County's justification for such a show of police force at a rodent inspection: fear of neo-Nazi property manager Keith Gilbert.

Federal agents arrested Gilbert -- a career racist who once bragged about plotting to blow up the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- on Tuesday just around the corner from the scene of the rat raid. Agents maintain that Gilbert has been peddling machine guns. They seized about 100 guns from his home.

Heather Carr, an attorney for the city, noted that Hugh Sisley owns the house at 6418 Brooklyn Ave. N.E. And Sisley, who has dozens of dilapidated properties within a few square blocks in the Roosevelt district, used Gilbert as his property manager.

"The officers had information that there were legitimate safety concerns," Carr told the judges. "They knew that the properties were associated with Keith Gilbert."

But Gilbert -- dubbed by former Roosevelt Neighborhood Association president Susan Baker "a thug hired by the local slumlord to keep the neighborhood and the tenants and everybody else under control" -- was not there the day of the raid.

U.S. Circuit Judge Betty Fletcher asked why the residents weren't released once it became clear that Gilbert wasn't present. Carr responded: "The concern was that they would go and enlist Mr. Gilbert" if they were released.

Sogga scoffs at that notion, saying that she knew Gilbert only by reputation and always stayed away from the man.

Spokesman James Apa with Public Health -- Seattle & King County said yesterday that the department gets search warrants to inspect for such pests as rats perhaps two or three times a year "only after repeated attempts to get voluntary compliance" from the owners and inhabitants of properties.

And whenever the department gets a search warrant, it always asks for police help.

Linda Gallagher, an attorney for Public Health, said that when a professional exterminator from Terminix told department inspectors that the property had "the worst evidence of rodent infestation that he had seen in all these years," it was clear that there was probable cause to get a search warrant to inspect the place.

But Jose Vera, a lawyer who represents Sogga and the other residents, slammed the broad nature of the search warrant that allowed inspectors to look throughout the dwelling, even inside drawers.

"We're not talking about a meth lab ... we're talking about rats," Vera said.

To which U.S. Circuit Judge Ronald Gould responded: "There was a time in Europe when everyone died of black plague."

"Yeah, but in context, in 1999, there was no plague epidemic," Vera said.

Sogga wants to know what justification police officers had for rummaging through her personal papers and photographs when they were supposed to be providing security to rat inspectors.

When she was finally released and allowed to return to her room, which she described as "trashed," she found a series of highly intimate photos of her and an old lover carefully laid out on top of her bed.

"I don't think it's right," Sogga said. "They look through anything they want and humiliate you. They weren't supposed to be there looking through my stuff. I'm very angry. I don't feel like I can trust the police anymore."

No live rats were found that day, just one, well-preserved dead one and a few dried up droppings.

P-I reporter Paul Shukovsky can be reached at 206-448-8072 or paulshukovsky@seattlepi.com

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