Some transit unit officers are too aggressive, critics say

Friday, July 21, 2006

By ERIC NALDER AND LEWIS KAMB
P-I INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS

(Editor's note: This story has been edited since it was originally published. The original version indicated one officer had been specifically transferred to the Metro unit for disciplinary reasons. The Sheriff's Office said after the story appeared that no officer had been transferred to the Metro unit for disciplinary reasons.)

King County's Metro Transit police force had its share of aggressive behavior by officers before three undercover bus cops tackled and manacled bicyclists participating in a demonstration three weeks ago.

The sheriff's commuter unit has, among other things, arrested a veteran Metro tunnel supervisor who argued with deputies; used a Taser on a teenage girl who ran off without paying her fare; charged a Good Samaritan with a crime when she reported three unidentifiable undercover officers beating a man at a bus stop; and ogled female pedestrians through a security camera in a downtown department store.

Several Metro transit employees and Seattle police officers regard the sheriff's transit unit as a dumping ground for problem deputies, and a bastion of tough guys who provoke confrontations. Two Metro employees say they have witnessed overly aggressive deputies who have crossed the line of good police work, using excessive force in making arrests for minor infractions, including ducking bus fares. Some say there is little or no supervision of the deputies, particularly at night.

"Over a 50-cent bus fare, people were laying in pools of blood," said Dale Anderson, the Metro tunnel supervisor who tangled with -- and was arrested by -- King County transit unit cops. He referred to an incident in which he says two deputies slammed a youth's head onto the hood of a patrol car after he failed to pay his fare.

"It has been known for years, or has been suspected for years and years, that (King County) police dump their anger-challenged officers into Metro and bring them into city of Seattle."

County officials dispute that the unit is made up of problem officers.


		Gilbert W. Arias / P-I
	Sheriff's Master Police Officer Robert Edward Nix listens to a woman complain about a disturbance on a Metro bus. Critics say that some of Nix's colleagues are too rough with suspects and that the unit is a dumping ground for officers with disciplinary problems.

"It is not a dumping ground," said King County Executive Ron Sims.

Metro Transit Police Chief Carol Cummings told members of the King County Regional Transportation Committee Wednesday that deputies who join transit police are virtually hand-picked.

"We want deputies who are excited about working in Metro," she told the council members.

Metro General Manager Kevin Desmond also defends the unit.

"I have never seen a complaint from a customer about a police officer in the system," said Desmond, 48, who lives in Pierce County and acknowledges that he isn't typically involved in reviewing such customer feedback. But information supplied by Metro shows that there have been a number of customer complaints about Metro cops in recent years.

(See samples of Metro customer complaints [407K PDF].)

"I think our customers appreciate seeing police in the system," Desmond said, "and I think they appreciate having undercover, plainclothes police in the system."

In one of the most recent incidents to draw outrage, three undercover transit deputies tackled and arrested two protesting bicyclists after one blocked traffic at a downtown intersection -- a routine demonstration that Seattle police typically allow to happen without arrests. Neither bicyclist has been charged with a crime. One of those deputies, Koby Hamill, was involved with the incident that led to Anderson's arrest.

The Seattle P-I has identified five other Metro Transit deputies who had legal or disciplinary problems before joining the unit, including at least one transferred there after two complaints against him had been sustained by an internal investigations union. (Editor's note: When this story was originally published, this paragraph said that the officer had been transferred to the Metro union for disciplinary reasons. The Sheriff's Office said after the story appeared that no officer had been transferred to the Metro unit for disciplinary reasons.)

All but one are now gone, including Sgt. Patrick Saulet, who was recently demoted and removed from the unit following a P-I investigation.

But before and during the time they were assigned to the transit unit, these officers had been reported for a variety of offenses, including abusing citizens, disobeying supervisors and cheating on off-duty pay. One still working for the transit unit was accused by his former girlfriend of harassment and stalking.

The controversies come to light at a time when the Metro police force is undergoing an overhaul, shifting from an ad hoc collection of off-duty Seattle cops and on-duty sheriff's deputies into a full-time transit police force made up almost entirely of sheriff's deputies.

Many bus drivers, sick of crime and harassment, support the change to a full-time police force, although some have expressed concerns about the actions of some sheriff's deputies. Statistics show that bus driver reports of incidents have increased sharply over the years, concentrated on certain runs and ranging from spitting to assault.

Metro officials say deputies should be commended, not castigated, because they are doing a better job policing buses than the off-duty Seattle cops they have been replacing. Metro Transit's Desmond said the bicycle arrest incident was a "highly isolated small matter" in a system that otherwise enjoys good policing and good coordination between King County and Seattle police.

Desmond said he was aware of Anderson's arrest, but said he hadn't heard about other incidents.

Transit supervisor arrested

Anderson, who says he has worked cooperatively with Seattle police for 15 years, was in charge of tunnel operations at the International District on Jan. 7, 2005, when he mistakenly believed that private security guards were preventing an aid car from entering the tunnel. Weeks earlier, guards had blocked a fire truck, and he thought it was happening again.

Unable to talk with the cops at the tunnel entrance -- in part because the Sheriff's Office had cut off direct radio communications for Metro supervisors -- he ran to the entrance and cursed loudly, asking, "What the (expletive) was going on?"

That's when, Anderson says, Hamill, joined by Saulet, confronted him. The deputy said in a report he wrote afterward that Anderson "was acting completely out of control." Hamill did not respond to interview requests.

Other witnesses, including a Seattle police officer, also reported that Anderson was extremely angry, though only one -- a security guard who couldn't be reached for comment -- said he saw Anderson push on Hamill's chest, documents show. (See the documents [191K PDF]) Anderson denies that. The deputies deemed the alleged contact an assault, arrested Anderson and took him to jail.

Anderson admits that he put out his hand when the deputies backed him up, but he says it was to protect himself.

"I lost my temper. I was unprofessional. I'm the first to admit it," Anderson said, but he said it was Hamill who lost control.

Hamill does not have a sustained complaint against him on record with the Sheriff's Office, said department legal adviser Patty Shelledy. Anderson recalls being terrified by the beefy deputy coming at him.

"His face was bright red. Contorted," Anderson said. "He was screaming so I could see spittle coming out of his mouth."

Anderson said he backpedaled in fear. Saulet and another deputy, Steven Gowin, got on either side of him, and he was forced up against a patrol car, he said.

As Hamill, Saulet and Gowin backed him against the squad car, Anderson said, he also had reason to believe that the deputies might be out for revenge. He had sent an e-mail to his supervisor on Nov. 24, 2004, complaining about deputies parking in the tunnel's middle lane. In a Dec. 3, 2004, e-mail, Anderson told his supervisor that a bus driver had complained that he had to slam on his brakes in the tunnel to avoid a sheriff's car that allegedly ran a red light.

Though he was initially charged with assault, the case against him was amended to obstructing a police officer. The charges were dismissed after he performed 30 hours of community service and took eight hours of anger management training. He was also disciplined by Metro -- a three-day unpaid suspension -- but he said he felt Metro officials handled him fairly and supportively.

Seattle police Officer Chris Shean -- who made as much as $12,000 a year working transit duties -- said that since Anderson's arrest in January 2005 he has been noticing and hearing more about the behavior of transit deputies.

Although reluctant to publicly criticize deputies, he said, "Some of our officers as well as Metro supervisors had witnessed incidents of what they perceived as overreactions in and around the Metro Tunnel by county officers."

He noted that after Anderson's arrest, he and about half a dozen other Seattle police officers tried to reinvestigate the incident. Despite strong suspicions, they couldn't find enough evidence to prove that it was a bad arrest.

"We were all kind of in disbelief," said Shean, 56, a patrol officer and hostage negotiator who became a cop 26 years ago.

Lawyers who have represented clients alleging police abuse say that obstruction charges like the one brought against Anderson are a red flag because they believe that cops sometimes use that charge to cover up their own behavior. As long as a person is charged with a crime -- in this case, obstructing -- it is less likely that the arrested person can successfully accuse an officer of wrongdoing, Tacoma lawyer Joseph Diaz said.

Obstructing a police officer

Diaz, a former prosecutor who normally defends police officers against lawsuits, recently represented a client who claimed that a King County sheriff's deputy manhandled him during an arrest on suspicion of domestic violence. The client won $5,000 in damages.

A former Seattle woman who saw what appeared to be two thugs beating a homeless man later complained to the Sheriff's Office when she discovered that they were Metro deputies. But Sherry Reynolds' complaint to the sheriff in 2002 was short-circuited because she, too, was charged with obstructing, four months after filing the complaint.

Seattle lawyer Michael Schwartz, a former King County prosecutor, said he warns anyone who files a complaint against a police officer that it is possible that they might soon get an obstructing citation in the mail.

"I've always felt the obstructing charge is just a CYA, cover your ass, once they've used some force on someone," said Diaz, a former Tacoma city prosecutor.

Officers working transit arrested 113 people for obstructing in the past 5 1/2 years, ranging from just nine in 2001 to a spike of 37 in 2004, according to statistics provided by Metro. They are on pace to nearly match that number this year, with 18 obstructing arrests so far. The data didn't break down these arrests between sheriff's deputies and off-duty cops, but most were arrests made by deputies.

'Tased' for not paying

Two years ago, Deputy Alan "Woody" Garrison -- a 23-year Sheriff's Office veteran and former treasurer for the King County Police Officers Guild -- shot his Taser at a teenage girl when she ran from him after not paying her $1.25 bus fare.

Garrison was working for Metro's "proactive unit" -- a squad that routinely works undercover -- when the 14-year-old girl and a man accompanying her boarded a Route 174 bus in downtown Seattle on March 15, 2004.

After riding for only a few blocks, the girl and the man got off the bus near Occidental Park after the driver told them they couldn't ride free.

Garrison followed and confronted them on a sidewalk. "I told them they were under arrest for fare evasion," he wrote in an incident report. (See the incident report [171K PDF])

The man sprinted away. The girl tried running, too -- and Garrison gave chase.

"After a short period of time it became obvious that she was too fleet of foot for me to overtake her... ," Garrison wrote. "I decided to use my Taser to stop her."

Garrison fired the device, striking the girl in the back. But the Taser didn't work and she kept running.

After a man pedaling a bicycle-powered rickshaw nearby gave him a ride, Garrison caught up to the girl and arrested her. The girl, who turned out to be a runaway, was booked for investigation of fare evasion, obstructing a law enforcement officer and escape from custody. She also was immediately suspended from using Metro Transit for seven days.

According to Sheriff's Office policy, Tasers "may be used to control a physically resistive, aggressive or violent subject who poses a threat of physical harm to his/herself, to the deputy(s) or to other persons or property."

The Sheriff's Office did not respond to a question about whether Garrison's application of the Taser was appropriate. Garrison was on vacation this week and unavailable for comment.

Alex Williams, a commercial photographer, had his own run-in with a zealous transit deputy whose overreaching, he says, violated his civil liberties.

In April 2005, Williams and a friend were taking photographs with rented commercial camera equipment inside the downtown bus tunnel when they encountered Patrick Saulet.

"We had the camera set up for about 20 minutes when he approached us," said Williams, 29, of Woodinville. "He was like, 'Oh, no, no, no, no. This is not good.' "

The deputy ordered Williams to hand over his digital flash cards.

"I asked him if it was against the law," Williams said. "He said there was no law. It was just sort of an unwritten rule."

"It seemed absurd to me. We had this big, honkin' box out in the middle of everything," Williams added. "How many terrorists would go around with a camera this size?"

Williams was irate. When he got home, he discovered that nothing should have legally prevented him from taking the photographs. He wrote a complaint to the Sheriff's Office, contacted the media and called the American Civil Liberties Union. He also wrote about the account on his Web site, which drew a large response from others.

A few days later, Metro Transit Police Chief Cummings personally returned the confiscated flash cards to Williams.

"I got the feeling there was a wider problem here," Williams added, based on the response to the incident. "It seemed like it was a couple of bored cops, just looking for some kind of action. There really wasn't any reason to be concerned on their part."

At least twice during the spring of 2005, transit officers inappropriately used a surveillance camera to ogle female pedestrians walking outside the downtown Macy's.

Video evidence from the camera -- which was positioned inside a security area within the department store to which both city and county transit cops had access -- at one point zoomed in on "the backside of a woman walking away," sheriff's spokesman John Urquhart told KIRO/7 last year.

"It lingers on her as she walks away," he said. "So I think the only inference you can draw from that is that the guys using the camera were using it inappropriately."

After store officials complained, both police agencies looked into the matter.

"There was no evidence that would indicate that any of our officers did anything wrong," said Seattle police spokesman Sean Whitcomb. Still, Seattle commanders "took the opportunity to offer additional training" to city officers in light of the incident, Whitcomb said.

The Sheriff's Office admitted that its officers were responsible for at least one of the incidents.

"We told the guys, 'Hey, knock it off,' " Urquhart told KIRO. "As simple as that. And that's as far as it's going to go."

It's unclear which deputies were involved in the incident, or whether the department disciplined them. Urquhart did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

P-I reporters Hector Castro, Paul Shukovsky, Daniel Lathrop and Phuong Le and researcher Marsha Milroy contributed to this report. P-I reporter Eric Nalder can be reached at 206-448-8011 or ericnalder@seattlepi.com. P-I reporter Lewis Kamb can be reached at 206-448-8336 or lewiskamb@seattlepi.com.

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