Dow Constantine urges anti-police process

An inquest into the shooting death of Charleena Lyles found the officers acted consistent with training when using deadly force. It turns out, when you try to stab officers they have the right to protect themselves, even in Seattle, a city known for activists with anti-police sentiment.

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Now, because the inquest didn’t find what he had hoped they would, King County Executive Dow Constantine seems to want to change the process.

Constantine has created a committee to look into ways to change the inquest procedure. Their role? To make recommendations on how to better the inquest procedure. The truth? Come up with a process that will more easily find officers to have committed crimes.

At least, that’s the impression he gives.

“From a public-policy perspective, you want to do more than figure out the what, where and when,” Dow Constantine said, according to The Seattle Times. “You want to know what you can do to prevent it from happening in the future.”

Why was Lyles shot and killed? Because she allegedly lured cops to her apartment under false pretenses and tried to stab them to death. That’s why. The underlying issue? It seems mental health problems weren’t properly addressed. It doesn’t make it less of a tragedy — indeed, this is a huge tragedy that we all wish didn’t happen — but it doesn’t make the cops guilty. No fair process in place would find otherwise.

When he announced the inquest, Constantine said the process would “provide transparency into law enforcement actions so the public may have all the facts established in a court of law.” There was no criticism of the inquest in his order.

He’s changed his tune, asking his committee to recommend “any potential changes to make inquests more transparent, fair, and meaningful for all those involved, and to provide greater confidence in our justice system to the entire community.”

Here’s a question: would Dow Constantine ask for this review if the inquest found the officers acted inappropriately? I’m not so sure. And if he would have, perhaps he should have made his desires known earlier than after the results of an inquest into a politically charged shooting.

Instead, he makes this announcement mere days after the Lyles inquest documents were made public. This is meant to placate the anti-police crowd that Constantine seems awful cozy with.

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