Disturbing questions, public outcry in wake of fatal police shootings

Is the public outcry following fatal shootings by police in Seattle and Spokane Valley justified?

Because some disturbing questions have arisen in a couple of those cases, the answer is yes, and this column doesn’t take that position lightly. This is the same writer who, in the July 15, 2000 edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer not only defended but analyzed and explained why the fatal shooting of robbery suspect David John Walker was, in the parlance, “a righteous shoot.” Days later an inquest jury found the shooting justified and later the next month, then-King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng declined to prosecute. Readers can see what was written at the time here and consider my remarks. (Pay attention, Walker was armed with a knife and he made a very threatening move with that knife.) 

Back in May, KING 5 News’ Linda Byron reported that police officers are “rarely found guilty in high-profile misconduct cases.” Byron's report includes footage of the Walker incident, right up to the point where he was shot by officer Tom Doran. With all due respect to KING’s headline writers, it is not necessarily “misconduct” to be involved in a shooting. “Misconduct” is hardly the term that might be applied if such a shooting is ruled unjustified.

That’s what critics of police shootings in Seattle and Spokane Valley are suggesting. Over in Spokane, the family of slain pastor Wayne Scott Creach are calling his death “murder” at the hands of Sheriff’s Deputy Brian Hirzel. This column wrote about the Creach shooting here, and Spokane Spokesman-Review columnist Doug Clark has essentially called B.S. on Hirzel’s account of the incident. The deputy claims to have struck Creach in the knee with his baton hard enough to cause the older man to fall down, but Clark reveals that an autopsy found no marks on the body to indicate any such major blow with a baton.

In Seattle, the Native American community is incensed over the fatal shooting of John T. Williams, a First Nations wood carver by officer Ian Birk, who confronted Williams over the knife he was holding. This column first addressed that shooting here.

Police officers are not above the law, though critics have that impression. Demands that cops involved in fatal shootings be fired are typically premature, before investigations are completed. Much as it alarms police critics, people who get killed by cops frequently have it coming, same as people who are justifiably slain by armed private citizens. That’s a cold, hard fact.

Just think “Maurice Clemmons.” He’s the man who gunned down four Lakewood police officers last year, and may have been trying to up the score on a South Seattle street a couple of days later, but the officer he confronted stopped him cold.

But there are questions that have yet to be answered about the Creach and Williams shootings; questions that could hardly come up in the aftermath of a shooting in West Seattle on Sept. 3. That guy, identified as Thomas J. Qualls, was armed with a loaded semiautomatic rifle and a Detonics .45-caliber pistol, and if Post-Intelligencer.com reporter Casey McNerthney’s account is accurate – and his stories typically are – then Seattle police appear entirely justified to have shot the suspect. Qualls allegedly aimed the rifle at them. Faced with similar circumstances, knowing what the cops knew at the time, what would you do?

Creach was on his own property investigating a car parked in the lot adjacent to his nursery. It was dark, he had a handgun and flashlight and the car was reportedly unmarked. There is considerable disparity between what Hirzel reportedly told investigators and what members of Creach’s family are saying about the incident.

Williams was well-known in the neighborhood as a carver of small totems. Wood carvers typically have something to carve with, and in this case, it was a knife with a blade approximately 3 inches long. Williams had a history that included public intoxication, and he was hard of hearing. He was apparently carving a piece of wood when the confrontation between him and Birk unfolded.

And now there has been yet another fatal shooting by police, this time in Vancouver, and the dead man is an Iraq war veteran who allegedly was walking through a neighborhood with a pistol in his hand. Nikkolas W. Lookabill, a member of the Oregon National Guard, is dead. Confronted by three Vancouver police officers identified by the Vancouver Columbian as Sgt. John Schultz and Officers Frank Gomez and Gerardo Gutierrez, Lookabill allegedly did not drop his pistol when ordered to.

Meanwhile, my colleague in Fort Smith, Ark., Steve Jones, has written an interesting story about a shooting down there in which a private citizen will not be prosecuted for shooting at an off-duty policeman, because the shooting was determined to have been in self-defense. The local Fox News affiliate reported on the confrontation and aftermath.

We’ll just bet there are a lot of questions being asked about that one by Arkansas authorities, as well.
 

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