Come what may, the Center’s lawsuit against the City over the death of Otto Zehm engages an important battle for the soul of Spokane.
A little before 3:30 p.m. last Friday, the Center filed a long-awaited federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of Otto Zehm’s mother and his estate. I’m not going to
embellish the specifics of the complaint. Our attorneys, Breean Beggs and Jeffry Finer, chose their words very carefully, both in the complaint itself and in their public statements about it.
What I want to add here is what I know about the context, and to explain why I think this case is a defining moment both for the community and for the Center for Justice.
As a then-young journalist, I was handed the assignment of reporting on police brutality in Spokane in early 1981 by my editors at Spokane Magazine. I was given most of three months to do the story and my editor, Bill Stimson, helped me put together a half dozen accounts of violent arrests that still speak for themselves. The Spokane Police Department refused to make the arresting officers involved available for interviews. So I was forced to rely on police reports and eye witness testimony. You can read the story here.
The story didn’t end with the story. Because it embarrassed the city and police department, the department essentially demanded a do-over. Shortly after the article appeared, I was called to a meeting, with Stimson and Larry Shook, the magazine’s co-publisher. We gathered in the city manager’s office at City Hall. There, we were to be presented with the evidence that supposedly refuted my reporting on each of the incidents. After about ten minutes of introductions and
conversation, then-City Manager Terry Novak slid the envelope onto the table for us to collect.
At that point, Stimson explained that we were grateful to have the information but would naturally check it out against police records and our witnesses. And that was when Police Chief Robert Panther reached out and grabbed the envelope back, saying he wanted to think about it some more. We never got the envelope and our continued efforts to interview police officers were also thwarted. You can read about the meeting in Novak’s office here. Although it bears my byline, the follow up article describing the meeting was largely written by Stimson. My contribution to was to add yet another account of the police beating a suspect, closely observed by several witnesses, one of whom was even listed in a police report as a witness for the police.
Needless to say, the 1981 investigation was a real eye-opener. It’s not unusual for a police force the size of Spokane’s to have a problem with police brutality. Nor is it unusual for the police to protect their own. What’s unusual about Spokane is the extent to which the department and city government itself is arrayed and aligned to defeat any notion, any charge, or any suggestion that police officers even occasionally abuse their authority.
The unspoken policy is that the complainant is always wrong and the more a victim of police violence complains (provided he or she survives to complain) the more likely the city will take legal action in retaliation. Two years ago, Spokesman-Review investigative reporters Karen Dorn Steele and Bill Morlin documented this practice in a lengthy article. One of the cases they cited is the case of organic farmer Chrys Ostrander, a Center client. Ostrander was badly injured when he was arrested by a Spokane police officer during what was later ruled to be an unlawful traffic stop. When he and the Center filed a civil rights case against the city, the city responded by charging Ostrander with “malicious prosecution and defamation.” Ostrander ultimately received a $20,000 settlement from the city and
the city’s counter-claim was tossed by the courts for lack of evidence.
Not one elected official has spoken out against these tactics. Not one.
One of the things that struck me when I was doing my investigation 28 years ago is how devastated people were when they found themselves in a position where they believed they’d been battered by their own public safety officers and found that, other than talking to a reporter, they had no recourse. At best, it’s humiliating. You wake up in a leafy, sunny city with a river running through it, one day, thinking that the people you pay your taxes to have your back. Then because of a seemingly minor lapse of judgment, or mistaken identity, you not only have blood coming out of your nose, but you’re being accused of resisting arrest, or worse. It may not even matter that you have witnesses that will back you up. It doesn’t matter who you are. It just comes down to the fact that your accuser wears a uniform and you don’t. Your nose can be fixed. The lasting psychological scar
remains.
On a collective scale the most disturbing part, to me, is the deserved suspicion that the police department and the police union are beyond the reach of accountability and responsibility. Spokane is not Mugabe’s Zimbabwe or Noriega’s Panama, but the same rule about power applies. Unchecked power corrupts. And the notion that the unchecked power of the Spokane police department is somehow tolerable
because it doesn’t necessarily spill over into other aspects of our community’s life is a misguided notion at best. Communities have souls and tolerating injustice is not something a soul can hide from.
I’ve had the honor and privilege to work at the Center for a year now. But I’ve never been prouder to work here than I was last week. Spokane is a better place whenever someone or some group of brave citizens decides to speak truth to power. And that’s what the Center did Friday by filing the Zehm lawsuit. It doesn’t mean we’re going to win this case, and it doesn’t mean that the larger goal of repairing the broken relationship between the community and the police department is within our reach. But someone had to try to seek justice for Otto Zehm, even posthumously. Come what may, I’m proud it was us.
–Tim Connor
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