
By Paul Kiefer
On Wednesday, Interim Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz announced his decision to overturn the Office of Police Accountability’s (OPA) findings in one of the most prominent misconduct cases of last summer’s protests. The case centered on the Seattle Police Department’s use of blast balls, tear gas and pepper spray against protesters at the intersection of 11th Ave. and Pine St. on the evening of June 1, 2020, after an officer attempted to yank a pink umbrella out of a protester’s hands.
The chief’s decision to overturn the OPA’s finding of excessive force against Lieutenant John Brooks, who gave the order to use the weapons against protesters, sparked an outcry from police accountability advocates and activist groups. The Community Police Commission, one of Seattle’s trio of police oversight bodies, called Diaz’s decision “detrimental to community trust in SPD and Seattle’s entire police accountability system,” particularly because he offered no detail about how he would hold decision-makers at a “higher level of command authority” responsible in lieu of Brooks.
In a conversation with PubliCola last week, Diaz said he does not want his decision to absolve Brooks of responsibility to overshadow his record as a disciplinarian. Since becoming interim chief in September 2020, Diaz has fired eight officers for misconduct, and two more officers retired to avoid termination; Diaz displays their badges in a wooden box on his desk.
“If there’s an officer-involved shooting and the officer has a history of complaints from years past, we’re going to say, ‘we’ve trained you, we’ve done everything we can for you and you’re still not getting it. That might end up reaching the level of termination.”
Of the ten officers Diaz has fired or would have fired, nearly all violated SPD’s policies prohibiting dishonesty or biased policing; among those officers was Sina Ebinger, who retired in lieu of termination after lying about misusing SPD’s Navigation Team to pick up her trash, as well as a 911 dispatcher who told a Black caller that “all lives matter.”
But Diaz has not yet fired any officers for using excessive force, despite the flood of use-of-force complaints stemming from last year’s protests. Diaz told PubliCola that when compared to dishonesty, the disciplinary standards for excessive force are generally less harsh. “A lot of inappropriate use of force cases are incidents in which an officer put hands on a person or did something that didn’t cause an injury, but could still be excessive,” he said. “That doesn’t mean the officer was dishonest about it—they documented the incident, and they explained why they thought their actions were appropriate, but their supervisor disagreed.” Continue reading “Police Chief Diaz on Why He Hasn’t Fired Any Officers for Excessive Force”