OPA investigation finds two SPD officers participated in January 6th insurrection

This afternoon the Office of Police Accountability released its long-awaited and much-anticipated report of its investigation of six SPD officers who were in Washington D.C. on January 6th, the day of the Trump-inspired insurrection. It concluded that all six officers joined the rally at which then-President Trump spoke, but it only found evidence that two of them participated in the illegal storming of the Capitol that followed. It found conclusive evidence that three of the other four were elsewhere at the time, and its investigation of the fourth was inconclusive. Omari Salisbury and I discussed today’s OPA report with OPA …

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OPA releases first set of findings from investigations into SPD officers’ misconduct at protests

This morning, the Office of Police Accountability released its first set of “closed case” summaries for five cases lodged against SPD officers related to misconduct during this past summer’s protests — including two incidents from May 30 that went viral on social media. Also: here is my in-depth Q&A with OPA Director Andrew Myerberg, where we touch on the issues raised by these cases, the status of OPA investigations into police misconduct at the protests, and many other topics related to police accountabilty.

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Q&A with OPA Director Andrew Myerberg

In anticipation of today’s release by the OPA of its first batch of findings from complaints arising from this summer’s protests, OPA Director Andrew Myerberg graciously sat down with me yesterday for an interview. Here is the full interview, lightly edited for clarity.   Kevin Schofield: How do you feel that the investigations are going so far? Andrew Myerberg: I think they’re going well. As you can imagine the cases, they kind of range in complexity. Using the pepper spray case for an example, it was an easier case in some respects to start to isolate the video, because there …

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Recommendations on ‘less lethal” weapons highlight difficult policy tradeoffs for SPD in use of force and crowd control

On Friday, the three accountability bodies that watchdog the Seattle Police Department — the Office of Police Accountability (OPA), the Office of the Inspector General for Public Safety (OIG), and the Community Police Commission (CPC) — released their written recommendations on SPD’s use of so-called “less lethal” weapons such as tear gas and blast balls. Taken together, the reports make it clear why it’s so difficult to make policy around the use of these weapons for crowd control and other purposes.

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