Tag: Brady Lists

criminal justice, Elections, homelessness, Media

Jail Guard Falsified Security Check Prior to Inmate Suicide; Candidate Proposes Shipping Homeless Out of Seattle

1. King County Jail Guard Falsified Records Surrounding Inmate Suicide

A correctional officer at the King County jail in downtown Seattle failed to do a required security check less than two hours before a 47-year-old man with “a history of mental health issues” committed suicide in his cell last year, then falsified a record to make it appear that he had performed the check, PubliCola has learned.

Disciplinary records from the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention confirm that the guard, Emmanuel Palaita, did perform a check about an hour before the inmate, Keith Denegal, was found dead in his cell in the early morning of February 20, 2022. However, Palaita failed to do the previous mandatory check, leaving Denegal alone in his cell for more than an hour and a half, in violation of jail rules requiring checks at least once an hour. An investigator concluded that Palaita’s “failure to act endangered the safety of the inmate population he was responsible for.”

Because of the fraudulent log, investigators found Palaita had violated department policy, falsified documents, caused loss or injury to the county or public, and breached jail security. He was never disciplined, however, because he left his shift and never came back, going on leave for several weeks before turning in his official resignation more than a month after walking off the job. According to DAJD spokesman Noah Haglund, Palaita never responded to notices about the internal investigation, and declined a hearing after the investigation to clear his name.

Because Palaita falsified a DAJD record, the department forwarded his name to the King County Prosecutor’s office for inclusion on the county’s Brady list—a list of law enforcement officers whose testimony in court is suspect because they have a history of dishonesty.

Since 2021, nine people have died “unexpectedly” at the jail, including five who committed suicide. Haglund said the department “has taken several important steps since last year to protect jail residents against self-harm,” including retrofits to remove gaps between beds and walls, limiting the distribution of over the counter medication, and increased suicide prevention training.

Since 2021, eight DAJD employees have been disciplined for falsifying security checks, Haglund said.

Because Palaita falsified a DAJD record, the department forwarded his name to the King County Prosecutor’s office for inclusion on the county’s Brady list—a list of law enforcement officers whose testimony in court is suspect because they have a history of dishonesty.

PubliCola has also determined that after Palaita left the county last February, he applied to be a Seattle firefighter, although it does not appear the department has hired him. According to records maintained by the city’s Public Safety Civil Service Commission, Palaita passed all the tests required for placement on the Seattle Fire Department’s Firefighter Register, one of the first steps toward becoming a firefighter in Seattle, and he will remain on the list until June 2024.

We have reached out to the fire department for more information about Palaita’s application and whether the department takes the Brady list into consideration when hiring firefighters.

2.  Here’s a Bold New Idea from Westneat’s Favorite Candidate: “Triage” Homeless People Into “Open Space” in King County

On Wednesday, the Seattle Times’ Danny Westneat posted a layup column lightly mocking “the good, the bad, the bizarre ideas” coming from some of the candidates who are unlikely to make it through this year’s August 1 primary. Among the “out-there ideas” Westneat chose for mockery: Taxing spray paint to stop graffiti; building campgrounds for homeless people around the city, including one where people could use fentanyl (“imagine the community meetings,” Westneat snorts) and using AI to audit city departments for waste. “Their ideas,” Westneat chuckles, are like “Seattle satire.”

Enjoying this article? PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you. Help keep PubliCola sustainable by CLICKING HERE to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Given his interest in oddball ideas, it’s strange that Westneat—who says he’s been attending forums and debates all around the city—failed to mention any of the bold new proposals from a candidate he helped boost to prominence two years ago: Kenneth Wilson, who’s running for the open seat in District 4. In 2021, when Wilson was running against council incumbent Teresa Mosqueda, Westneat wrote that he, “stands out in the crowd”  being “being boring and competent.” Westneat was thoroughly charmed by Wilson’s “dorky” engineer vibe, and praised him for his back-to-basics campaign focused on “mismanagement,” government waste, and “building housing for the homeless faster.”

So you’d think Wilson’s big idea this year would be right up Westneat’s alley. Wilson wants to fix homelessness with a “triage” system that will take homeless people off the streets of Seattle and relocate them to an as-yet-unidentified piece of land somewhere in King County, providing recycling bins for them to store their belongings while they “move along in the right path with us.”

“We could do something with triage, especially with King County and their big resources in land. And we would actually move and get these people on the path that’s away from drugs, it’s away from the challenges of the city,” Wilson said at a recent forum.

“There’s so many people in [Seattle] who’ve got mental issues and things like that,” he continued. “In King County, we have a lot of open space, beautiful areas where we can actually make a difference in people’s lives, get them away from the challenges that are making the addictions, causing some of the mental health spill-out, where the damage is coming to our community.”

Wilson, unlike the candidates Westneat poked fun at this week, has a decent shot of making it through the primary, thanks in part to the credibility Westneat’s column gave him during his first campaign. As of Wednesday, he had raised more money than any other candidate in his race.

Courts, criminal justice, Police

A Sexual Misconduct Investigation at a Rural Sheriff’s Department Highlights Gaps in State Police Oversight Laws
An Okanogan County Sheriff's Truck
An Okanogan County Sheriff’s Vehicle (Flickr: Diamondback Covers)

By Paul Kiefer

Maddesyn George spent much of the past year sitting in a cell in the Spokane County jail, awaiting her sentencing in an increasingly visible federal murder case. George, a 27-year-old from the Colville Reservation in north-central Washington, says she shot and killed her rapist in July 2020. After Colville tribal police took her into custody, she elaborated, telling prosecutors that the victim—Kristopher Graber, a man who sometimes sold her methamphetamine—had raped her at gunpoint at his house in Omak a day earlier. She stole his gun and fled, but she did not call 911 to report the rape to police in Omak: a detail that became relevant to her case, when prosecutors challenged her rape allegations. A day later, Graber caught up to her on the reservation, where George shot him with his own gun.

When tribal and federal prosecutors asked George why she hadn’t called the police to report her rape, she mentioned that she had reasons not to trust law enforcement in Omak. At the time, her reasoning seemed obvious: George is a Native American woman with a record of substance abuse, and she did not trust the county sheriff’s office to treat her fairly. But in late September, with her sentencing hearing approaching, George revealed another reason why she did not initially report her rape to local law enforcement: An Okanogan County Sheriff’s detective named Isaiah Holloway.

In purely geographic terms, Okanogan County is the largest in the state. But in many ways, the county is a small place. The remote stretch of mountains and plateaus along the Canadian border has a population of just 40,000; the largest town, Omak, is home to 5,000 of them. And the Okanogan County Sheriff’s Department, which patrols most of the county, has only three dozen sworn officers. In an agency as small as the Okanogan County Sheriff’s Department, a single case of misconduct can escalate dramatically. And Isaiah Holloway, at the center of two sexual misconduct complaints, is a prime example.

A fundamental lack of oversight on nearly every level in Washington leads to situations like the one that is still unfolding in Okanogan County, which highlights shortcomings in state rules about police officers and consent—and the power of law enforcement and prosecutors to decide whether misconduct matters.

George first recalls meeting Holloway during a traffic stop on a hot summer day in 2014, when Holloway stopped the car driven by a friend of hers to arrest the driver on a warrant from the Washington Department of Corrections. After placing her friend in handcuffs, Holloway began flirting with George, who was sitting in the passenger seat. When he asked to keep in touch, she gave him a fake phone number.

“A couple of days later, he tracked me down at a friend’s house,” she wrote in her statement to the federal court. “I still don’t know how he found me. He came to the door and said that it was ‘f—-d up’ that I gave him a fake number.” From that point on, she couldn’t avoid Holloway. For months, she wrote, Holloway regularly messaged her on Facebook, at one point telling her “that if [she] didn’t go out on a date with him,” she would “face greater scrutiny from police.” On other occasions, she added, he asked her to “get a room” with him. Increasingly uncomfortable with Holloway’s attention, George moved to a new town to avoid him. So when Graber allegedly raped her in Omak—a town within Holloway’s jurisdiction—George argues that she had a reason not to call 911.

George’s statement to the court didn’t include any evidence of Holloway’s alleged harassment. But she isn’t the first person to accuse Holloway of sexual misconduct; in fact, the detective admitted to another inappropriate sexual relationship last spring. However, because of holes in Washington’s laws about oversight for police and prosecutors—and about police officers and sexual consent—Holloway’s confession remained buried for nearly a year.

Washington state law is mostly silent on the question of consent between police officers and vulnerable people they meet in the course of their law enforcement work, which makes it easy for officers to pursue dubiously consensual sexual “relationships” without facing consequences. And one of the few potential long-term punishments for committing sexual misconduct—inclusion on a so-called “Brady List” of untrustworthy officers, which can make it harder to perform some key duties of a police officer—is entirely up to local law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, who get to draw their own conclusions about what makes the cut.

Support PubliCola

PUBLICOLA NEEDS YOUR HELP.

If you’re reading this, we know you’re someone who appreciates deeply sourced breaking news, features, and analysis—along with guest columns from local opinion leaders, ongoing coverage of the kind of stories that get short shrift in mainstream media, and informed, incisive opinion writing about issues that matter.

We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different: We’re funded entirely by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

So if you get something out of this site, consider giving something back by kicking in a few dollars a month, or making a one-time contribution of any amount, to help us keep doing this work. If you prefer to Venmo or write a check, our Support page includes information about those options. Thank you for your ongoing readership and support.

A fundamental lack of oversight on nearly every level in Washington leads to situations like the one that is still unfolding in Okanogan County, which highlights shortcomings in state rules about police officers and consent—and the power of law enforcement and prosecutors to decide what kinds of misconduct matter.

The pivotal investigation into Holloway began with a phone call to Deputy Rochelle Cline, the department’s communications manager, in March 2020. According to the caller, Holloway was having a sexual affair with a woman—who, for privacy reasons, PubliCola will refer to as B—whose history of addiction often landed her in the hands of the sheriff’s department; the caller also alleged that Holloway helped the woman “get out of her charges.” The caller was B’s brother.

The following afternoon, Holloway texted Cline unprompted, admitting to his relationship with B. He told Cline that his father’s death in 2017 and a 2019 incident in which he shot and injured a murder suspect had sent his mental health into a downward spiral. “I have tried to cover it all up for this ‘tough guy’ cop job I thought we had to be,” he wrote. “Instead of seeking help, I fell into a world of porn addiction, sexting and now an affair. I need help and I’m not sure where to turn to.” Cline, along with Sheriff Tony Hawley, drove to Holloway’s house to put him in touch with a counselor. Later that night, the department placed him on administrative leave.

Holloway did not respond to PubliCola’s requests for comment on the investigation and George’s allegations. 

The ensuing investigation provided only a little clarity. B herself denied having any intimate relationship with Holloway—a claim Cline quickly dismissed. Holloway told Cline that his “affair” with B began when he caught B with stolen property in December 2019. Instead of arresting her, Holloway relied on B to find the suspected thief; he also passed her his personal phone number. While he admitted to having sex with B twice while off-duty, he denied that he had helped her avoid arrest, pointing to an incident in which he ticketed her for driving with suspended license.

B’s family, on the other hand, insisted that Holloway was not simply having an affair; in their view, he was taking advantage of a woman struggling with addiction. B herself was unavailable to comment, but her brother told Cline he that suspected Holloway helped his sister avoid arrest. B’s sister made similar allegations when she spoke to Cline during the misconduct investigation, recalling that B was frustrated when Holloway didn’t intervene to stop a fellow officer from arresting her for theft. In her investigation report, Cline claimed that other sheriff’s officers had booked B into custody 12 times between April 2019 and March 2020 alone—evidence, she wrote in her report, that Holloway was not protecting B from his colleagues in exchange for sex.

A state law passed earlier this year specified that law enforcement officers can’t engage in consensual sex with a “person incarcerated or detained,” and provides an avenue for proving that an officer coerced a person into sex without formally detaining them, although this can be challenging to prove after the fact.

In May, the sheriff’s office concluded that Holloway had violated a half-dozen department rules, including policies prohibiting officers from using their positions for personal gain and from developing close relationships with “practicing criminal[s].” As punishment, the department suspended Holloway for three days without pay. Less than a year after this brief suspension, the office promoted Holloway from deputy to detective, assigning him largely to sex crimes cases.

Holloway’s disciplinary record at the Okanogan Sheriff’s Office doesn’t mention the possibility that he took advantage of B’s addiction and criminal record to coerce her into sex. Washington law prohibits officers from having sex with people in custody—doing so would constitute sexual assault—but according to Riddhi Mukhopadhyay, the director of the Seattle-based Sexual Violence Law Center, state law is less clear when it comes to officers’ sexual relationships with informants, drug users and others in vulnerable positions.

Aside from a state law passed earlier this year to improve Washington’s civil protection order system, which specified that law enforcement officers can’t engage in consensual sex with a “person incarcerated or detained,” state law is silent on the issue of police officers and sexual consent. State law does not address scenarios in which officers coerce a person into sex without formally detaining them: an encounter than can be challenging to prove after the fact.

The same is true for a quid-pro-quo exchange of sex for leniency: if an officer offers not to arrest someone in return for sex, the arrangement might not leave any paper trail. Even if a police officer did coerce a vulnerable person into sex, the victim might not feel safe enough to blow the whistle. “Based on the power dynamics of sexual violence,” Mukhopadyay said, “we know that predators in positions of power will target and victimize someone who is particularly vulnerable and could be easily dismissed—a victim with a criminal history, a victim who may have mental health issues, a victim in a subordinate position.” Continue reading “A Sexual Misconduct Investigation at a Rural Sheriff’s Department Highlights Gaps in State Police Oversight Laws” →

Cops, Crime, Featured, King County, Police

The City and County Keep Lists of Cops with Credibility Issues. Many of Them Remain on Patrol.
Image from SPD Detective Franklin Poblocki’s body camera

By Paul Kiefer

In early April, a pair of Seattle Police lieutenants from the West Precinct spotted a man rolling a bike and a garbage can down Main Street in the International District. Large coils of copper wire hung off the bike’s handlebars, and the garbage can was packed with more of the same wire. In their report, the officers noted that the wire appeared to have been torn or quickly cut; the officers concluded that the man had probably stolen it from a nearby construction site. When they stopped the man to question him, he quickly admitted that he had taken the wire from a site near Yesler Terrace. The officers then booked the man into the King County Jail.

By most standards, the arrest was unremarkable. But if one of the officers who arrested the man had been called to testify, her name—Lora Alcantara—would have triggered an alert that could have prompted prosecutors to drop the case.

Alcantara is one of 24 SPD officers on the so-called “Brady Lists” kept by the King County Prosecutor and the City Attorney’s Office. The lists, named after a 1963 US Supreme Court ruling called Brady v. Maryland that required prosecutors to present any evidence that might benefit the defendant, are formally known as Potential Impeachable Disclosure (PID) lists. They include the names of officers with sustained findings of dishonesty, evidence of racial bias, or criminal charges or convictions.

Alcantara was in added to the KCPO’s PID list in 2016 after a Seattle Office of Police Accountability Investigation found her guilty of misconduct for calling a Black driver a “fucking Negro” during a car chase in 2013. [UPDATE] A subsequent OPA investigation found that Alcantara also lied about her interaction with a KIRO-TV news crew she encountered during the chase when debriefing the incident with her supervisor, leaving her with an additional mark on her record for dishonesty. Former police chief Kathleen O’Toole suspended Alcantara for five days without pay for violating the SPD manual’s “prohibitions concerning derogatory language.” 

 

Support The C Is for Crank

The C Is for Crank is supported entirely by generous contributions from readers like you.

If you enjoy breaking news, commentary, and deep dives on issues that matter to you, please support this work by donating a few bucks a month to keep this reader-supported site going.

If you don’t wish to become a monthly contributor, you can always make a one-time donation via PayPal, Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7) or by mailing your contribution to P.O. Box 14328, Seattle, WA 98104. I’m truly grateful for your support.

In practice, those lists limit the ability of officers with a record of misconduct to testify. If a listed officer is the sole witness in a case, both prosecutors’ offices say they are far less likely to file charges, limiting the officers’ abilities to work alone. However, though listed officers are often unable to give testimony—a key responsibility of law enforcement officers, especially those working in patrol operations—salary and assignment data show that the department has continued to give the 24 officers annual raises and has left the vast majority in patrol positions. 

When a prosecutor from either office finds that an officer they subpoenaed to testify in a case is on their Brady list, their offices have to disclose that information (and additional details about the officer’s misconduct record) to either the defense attorney (if the officers are on the list because of a record of dishonesty) or the trial judge. Defense attorneys can use this information to impeach an officer’s testimony, and being on a Brady list “can be a factor in whether a prosecutor chooses to file charges,” Dan Nolte, the communications director for the city attorney’s office, said. “If a Brady List officer is on a case and no other officers can corroborate their account, we’re likely to seek additional evidence confirming the situation before choosing to file.”

Over the past decade, the lists have grown to include dozens of SPD officers, and they continue to grow.

Over the past decade, the lists have grown to include dozens of SPD officers, and they continue to grow. Most of the 75 SPD officers on the lists are no longer employed by the department: some, like 31-year SPD officer Ernest Hall (for whom the OPA found a lengthy record of dishonesty), the department fired outright; others, like former officer Alex Chapackdee (arrested in 2017 on federal drug trafficking and money laundering charges) resigned in lieu of termination; and others, like former Detective Ron Smith (charged for shooting a rival biker gang member at a South Dakota bar in 2008), retired from the department.

OPA Director Andrew Myerberg says it’s rare for officers who land on the lists to keep their jobs. Still, it is common enough that of the 75 SPD officers who prosecutors have added to their lists over the past 15 years, nearly a third remain employed by the department.

Four active SPD officers are on both lists because of dishonesty. One—Officer Christopher Garrett—landed on the KCPO list 15 years ago after lying about his availability to testify in a drug trial; he was among the first officers to be added to the list. Another, Detective Franklin Poblocki, somewhat famously spent forty minutes waiting outside a Black man’s workplace in the Central District in a rolling chair after the two exchanged barbs over a towed car in 2018. Poblocki told a passerby that he was waiting for an apology but claimed to his coworkers that he had merely been engaged in “community-oriented policing stuff.” In the wake of the incident, the OPA concluded that Poblocki had lied to investigators and now-outgoing SPD Chief Carmen Best demoted him from sergeant to detective for inappropriate behavior that “degraded” the department’s community policing efforts.

At least two current SPD officers on the CAO’s list have criminal charges on their records: Officer Caleb Howard was charged with misdemeanor assault in 2018 after punching a coworker and strangling his 17-year-old son at a backyard barbecue in 2018; 33-year SPD veteran (and one-time officer of the year) Officer Felton Miles was charged with felony harassment after bursting through the door of his ex-wife’s home and threatening to kill her and her boyfriend in 2007. SPD fired Miles, but a Seattle judicial board overturned Miles’ firing in 2008 and ordered the department to reinstate him.

This year, the salaries of all the officers on the lists add up to roughly $3.3 million, not including overtime.

Several on the list are fairly high-ranking. Captain Randal Woolery, for instance, was placed on the CAO’s list in 2019 after an undercover SPD prostitution sting caught him soliciting a sex worker in North Seattle (he has been charged for the incident but not convicted). Seven others on either list hold ranks of sergeant or higher, including Lieutenant Alcantara.

This year, the salaries of all the officers on the KCPO and CAO’s lists add up to roughly $3.3 million, not including overtime. Based on the city’s 2020 wage data, two of those officers—Captains James Dermody and Randal Woolery—will make over $200,000 this year before overtime. Others, like Lieutenant Alcantara, were promoted after the events that landed them on the Brady lists.

Just as notably, though their presence on the lists renders them vulnerable to impeachment as trial witnesses, SPD have left most of the officers on the lists to roles in patrol positions. As patrol officers, they are more likely to interact with the public and make arrests; therefore, the prosecutors are more likely to need their testimony when filing charges against those they arrest. Nolte says the city attorney’s office would rather turn to security camera footage or not file charges than have a case fail because the police witness appeared on their Brady List. KCPO Communications Director Casey McNerthey, however, noted that his office has not yet seen a case dismissed because an arresting officer was on their Brady list — after they disclose that information to the defense council, the court can adjust as necessary.

But that hasn’t stopped the listed officers from making stops and arrests. Detective Poblocki, for instance, has continued to make so-called “Terry Stops“—stopping someone based on an officer’s “reasonable suspicion” that the person is involved in criminal activity—for the past two years as part of the West Precinct’s burglary and theft squad, despite his dubious presence on the KCPO and CAO’s lists. In effect, the prosecutors (and police) have deemed Poblocki not credible enough to give testimony, but credible enough to conduct arrests, carry a gun, and earn a full salary.