NEWSPOLICE

John T. Williams was given just four seconds to comply with an order to drop the legal knife he was carrying for his trade before he was shot and killed by Officer Ian Birk last August -- one, two, three, dead. But even though the Seattle Police Department is expected to rule that the officer's decision to pull the trigger was unjustified, King County prosecutors are announcing they will not be pursuing criminal charges over the fatal shooting.

Such is one of the perks of wearing a uniform, it seems: you can kill a man in a shooting that even your own employers won't stand behind, and the worst that can happen is you'll lose your job – though even that hasn't happened yet.

A 50-year-old Native American, Williams was well known in Seattle for his skill as a woodcarver. When Officer Birk shot him dead on August 30 of last year, he was merely crossing the street with a wooden board and the 3” knife he used to carve – not only did he not commit an offense deserving of death, he didn't break any law. And according to eyewitnesses, he never rushed Officer Birk or so much as adopted an aggressive posture, contrary to the police department's initial claims.

When John T. Williams was shot dead by Officer Ian Birk for the “crime” of carrying a legal 3” knife, the Seattle Police Department initially claimed the beloved 50-year-old Native American woodcarver aggressively charged at the cop. But then eyewitnesses came forward and reported that Williams wasn't hostile at all -- in fact, they said he didn't even turn toward the officer.

Then last month video from Officer Birk's dashboard camera was released that – pardon the expression – shot the official story to hell, showing Williams was fired upon just four seconds after he was first told to drop his woodcarving knife. Half of the eight jurors who were part of an inquest into the shooting said there was no way Williams had enough time to comply. Just one said he probably did.

Now it's up to King Country Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, who ordered the inquest, to do the next logical thing: charge Officer Birk with murder, as any mere civilian without a shiny badge would have been charged long ago in similar circumstances. And activists are working to make sure that happens.

Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in federal prison on Friday, nearly two decades after he was fired from the department for his role in torturing more than a hundred suspects, almost all of them black and many of them completely innocent.

Burge’s four-year sentence drew understandable anger from many, especially among those directly affected by his actions, who are tired of seeing racial injustice punished with a slap on the wrist. Although I can never know what it felt like to fall victim to Burge’s torture, and although I’m a white boy from the suburbs who has no idea what living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1970s felt like, I want to make a challenge those angry with Burge’s sentence.

First, four years is not a slap on the wrist. It’s not an acquittal, and it’s twice as long as sentencing guidelines recommended. Too often, serious misconduct like Burge’s doesn’t even draw an investigation, let along charges and convictions. This measure of justice took too long to come, but it should mean something that it came at all.

Another police raid and yet another innocent family caught up in a failed war that sends heavily armed, masked and hyped up cops in search of largely nonviolent offenders. This time the raid happened in Spring Valley, New York, and left a 13-year-old child vomiting and gasping for air in an asthma attack triggered by the over-the-top and misdirected actions of police and DEA agents.

Several agencies executed numerous search warrants before dawn early in January. But when the SWAT team, complete with guns drawn, forced their way into the home at 36 Sharon Drive, they didn’t find the “Michael” they kept screaming for. It wasn’t because Michael was hiding or even out for the night -- it was because Michael lived down the street at 46 Sharon Drive.

The McKay family, including husband David, wife, 13-year-old daughter, and brother-in-law, were all roused from their sleep and rounded up by masked law enforcement agents. The child was pulled from her bed and “drug” down the stairs. She would later be taken to the emergency room for the resulting asthma attack, vomiting, and fainting episode. The entire family was led outside while officers searched inside for Michael, with the father in his underwear on the front lawn desperately trying to explain that no such person lived there.

Activists in Denver say there have been too many incidents of Denver police clobbering individuals and beating them to a pulp for officials to ignore any longer -- and they hope new Mayor Bill Vidal will get to the bottom of it.

Vidal appeared pretty mindful of that at his recent swearing-in ceremony this month.

"Unfortunately, recent events have clouded this [police department's] reputation," Vidal said during his opening address Jan 12. "It will take every one of us to build and strengthen [that reputation]."

He then turned to the city's police officers, asking them to act "in a manner that you would be proud of, no matter who's watching."

His comments followed years of almost non-stop police brutality accusations, a recent one being a civil rights lawsuit brought by Alexander Landau, who claims he was beaten bloody by Denver police during a routine traffic stop in January 2009 (photos and official complaint here). The three officers in that case, one of whom has been also implicated in brutality charges brought by Michael DeHererra in another high profile case (details below), were not disciplined, though all charges against Landau, then 19-years-old, were eventually dropped.

(Update: New Orleans has long been the incarceration capital of the U.S., imprisoning more people per capita than anywhere else in the country. But in a vote on February 3, the city council approved a new 1,400 bed jail that is less than half the size of the decaying facility it will be replacing, rejecting a proposal from the sheriff to build an even bigger jail after dozens of Change.org members and other activists urged them to consider alternatives to incarceration.)

New Orleans continues to make great strides toward a more focused -- and more efficient -- criminal justice system.

Last month, the city council voted to allow police officers to issue tickets -- rather than make arrests -- for low-level, non-violent crimes. This is a major shift for a city that has long lived a sort of double-life between the anything-goes vibe of the French Quarter to the quick arrests and tough sentences for crimes both minor and major.

As a report from the city's Metropolitan Crime Commission found in December, New Orleans police in recent years have arrested thousands of people over things like traffic tickets, minor warrants from other jurisdictions and other offenses not likely to ever make it to court. And while law enforcement and court resources are expended on the paperwork of these minor offenses, attention is distracted from major crime investigations. Although violent crime dropped in New Orleans in 2010, it could fall much further -- and these reforms will help make that happen.

Elizabeth and I have both written about these reforms, and more than 140 Change.org members have sent New Orleans' leaders a petition urging them to reconsider plans to expand the parish prison. Avoiding one-day jail stays for minor offenses could free up money from the jail expansion and from the red tape that follows every arrest. Those funds could instead be spent on crime prevention, alternatives to incarceration and law enforcement work on the cases that really matter. Add your name to the petition here.

Nearly six months ago an 11-year-old child lost her life when a police officer chose apathy over action. Now New York City officials seem to be practicing that same level of apathy in failing to prevent similar tragedies from happening again. Petitions have been signed, legislation introduced, and a lawsuit filed; but NYC has done nothing.

I first reported on this case in September, a month after Briana Ojeda needlessly lost her life. She was suffering from an asthma attack as her mother rushed her towards the hospital. Her journey to medical help was stopped by a member of New York’s finest, Officer Alfonso Mendez. In Carmen Ojeda’s haste, she had turned the wrong way on a one-way street and Mendez pulled her over. But, when she explained her daughter was in need of emergency assistance, Mendez smirked, saying, “I don’t do CPR.” It was during those critical moments that Briana’s family believes her life could have been saved.

The incident uncovered a lack of satisfactory procedures and protocols when it comes to officers of the NYPD and CPR. Although officers are trained and certified in CPR at the academy, that’s where the strict adherence to certification stops. After that point, how often an officer is recertified seems to depend on how inclined he is to seek recertification. In other words, it’s not a hard and fast requirement.

Immediately following Briana’s death, people being crying out for change. After all, are the police only there to make arrests and write tickets, or are they public servants who can be turned to in times of emergencies? If the cops are at the scene of an accident before the EMS, shouldn’t they at least try to help? Over 430 Change.org members so far have said yes, NYPD must do better when it comes to CPR training and recertification.

It was about dinnertime and just starting to get dark. Seventy-two year old Aaron Awtry had a dozen men in his illegal gambling house and another low-stakes poker game was getting underway. When he heard someone trying to gain entry into the house, his first thoughts were of a robbery. It wouldn’t be the first time his operation was broken into, and he yelled to the others while grabbing his gun, “We’re gonna be robbed!”

As the door shook on its hinges Awtry pulled the trigger, firing “at least once," according to one witness, and shooting the subject on the other side of the door in the arm.

Awtry didn’t expect what happened next. From the other side of the door came a barrage of gunfire -- at least 20 shots. He was hit in the hand and the arm. Between noticing the flashing lights on the surveillance monitor and finally hearing someone identify themselves on the other side of the door, the men realized they weren’t dealing with some robbers -- they were dealing with the police. “Why didn’t you tell me it was the cops?” Awtry would say.

Of course, there are two sides to every story. The deputies claim they announced themselves. And because one cop was injured, Awtry now faces charges of attempted murder.

When James Hart and Khalilalim Abusakran saw a deer trapped in a frozen river outside Baltimore, they tried to do the right thing by freeing it – and they succeeded. But when they got to land, police officers with the Maryland Natural Resources Department were waiting for them with citations in hand. The reward for the rescue? Two $90 fines.

“We seen the deer going under,” Abusakran told the local media. “It couldn’t maintain. It was starting to freeze, and it was really getting bad.” So he and Hart decided to go out to it and free it from the ice it was stuck in. “We had oars and shovels to break the ice, for the deer to get out.”

But they didn't have life vests, as police spokesman Sgt. Brian Albert told The Capital. And worse yet, when police allegedly told them to get out of the water, “the men didn't follow instructions,” the paper reports. The horror!

Understandably, officials with the Maryland Natural Resources Police have come under fire; apparently some people – crazy people, no doubt – see something wrong with punishing Good Samaritans for trying to save a life.

"We're coming under scrutiny," Albert conceded in an interview, before laying it on real thick. "But it's easy to pay a fine. It's hard to tell these gentlemen's families that they didn't make it because they were trying to rescue a deer cross the ice."

It's derided as security theater for a reason: things like random bag searches don't actually make us any safer – in fact, they may make us less safe by diverting limited law enforcement resources away from investigating actual threats – but politicians love it because it shows they are doing something. And if it's a major inconvenience to travelers? Oh well: eternal vigilance and strangers rifling through your personal possessions are the price we must pay for Freedom.

So it comes as no big surprise that officials in Washington, DC, instead of dedicating law enforcement resources to something worthwhile – like, say, stopping the constant attacks against their city's LGBT community – are instructing officers, in conjunction with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), to conduct random bag checks at the city's Metro stations, ostensibly to guard against the threat of terrorism (but more likely to catch a pot head than a jihadist).

“It is a way to throw the bad guys off who want to bring explosives into the system," Metro Transit Police Chief Michael Taborn said last week after announcing the move. Of course, a grown man who refers to “the bad guys” is not exactly someone I would like to trust with ensuring public safety, though I'm sure he has some excellent thoughts on whether Michael Keaton or Christian Bale made the better Batman. And as we've noted here before, as of late Taborn's own officers have harmed more D.C. residents than have actual terrorists.