A week has passed since King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg announced no charges would be filed against Seattle Police Officer Ian Birk in the shooting death of John T. Williams.
Looking back, several points come clear.
•State law protects police in the use of deadly force, stating it’s OK if the officer believes his or her life is in danger and acts without malice and in “good faith.” For the rest of us, “a person is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree when, with criminal negligence, he causes the death of another person.”
The law needs to be changed. We empathize with the police officers given the pressures they are under. However, in a case like this, there is no excuse for legal impotence in the face of criminal negligence.
•The Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) Firearms Review Board, in its findings on the shooting, laid out in no uncertain terms the egregious failures of Birk’s conduct, concluding the shooting lie “outside of [the police department’s] policy, tactics and training.” An obviously well-coached Birk stuck to his story on the stand: that he felt threatened.
•This renders obscene the stand taken by Sgt. Rich O’Neill, president of the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild, who claims there are no grounds for Birk, who has resigned from the police force, to be decertified as a law-enforcement officer. O’Neill need only refer to the Firearms Review Board’s findings. Shame on him.
•We heard from more than a few people who took offense at The Seattle Times’ characterization of Williams as a “chronic inebriate,” as if the Times meant to denigrate his reputation.
Such aggressive cluelessness is breathtaking. The “chronic inebriate” reference captured Williams’ diminished capacity and rendered Birk’s actions even less excusable — it was part of the storyline. If Williams had been a body-builder or champion broad jumper, those points would have been germane, as well. To those who trivialized tragedy by foisting personal agendas on the proceedings: Shame on them.
•Seattle Police Chief John Diaz is not the game-changer the SPD needs. Meanwhile, Mayor Mike McGinn has walked a tightrope between an innocent, outraged bystander and the one who sits at the desk where the buck stops. McGinn needs to pay more attention to the latter.
The system failed, from policing to prosecution, starting with Birk’s decision to pull the trigger four times on a man who, by several civilian accounts, was walking away from him.
There has been little dignity on parade in the aftermath of that warm, Aug. 30 afternoon, except from the Williams family.
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