Coalition calls on state AG to investigate 183 police officers with ‘compromised credibility’
Apr 8, 2021, 2:07 PM | Updated: 3:35 pm
Seattle police at a recent protest. (Derek Simeone, Flickr Creative Commons)
The Washington Black Lives Matter Alliance (WBLMA) issued a letter to state Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Thursday, calling on him to open an investigation into 183 police officers who they say have “compromised credibility.”
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This came in the wake of a report released Thursday morning by Crosscut’s Melissa Santos, which detailed the Washington police officers who have been placed on what’s known as the Brady list, or “essentially a collection of cops who come with a warning label.”
Officers on that list are identified based on incidents involving “dishonesty, lapses in judgment, bias or sloppy police work,” the report details.
That has officers flagged by prosecutors — most commonly for instances of dishonesty — who can then can use that knowledge to avoid calling them as witnesses should they have concerns over their credibility.
Up until now, that list was not public, with Crosscut filing over 100 records requests across 39 counties to piece it together.
In the wake of that report, the WBLMA — a coalition of leaders from Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County, BLM Tri-Cities, the NAACP, WA State Democrats, the Institute for Black Justice, and more — quickly drafted a letter to the Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, asking him to mount an independent investigation into the officers on the list.
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“Policing is broken,” the letter reads. “Not just in Seattle. Not just in Tacoma. Everywhere in the state and the country. There is an urgent need to bring accountability, independence, and an anti-racist lens into the process of excessive force, bias, and deception issues inside law enforcement agencies.”
The WBLMA went on to offer praise for the Washington Legislature’s continued progress on a bill that would establish an office designed to conduct independent investigations into allegations of officer misconduct. Lawmakers also passed a bill on Tuesday to create a centralized database for use of force incidents.
