On the fourth anniversary of Otto Zehm’s fatal arrest by Spokane police, dozens turn out at the scene of the tragedy to call for police accountability.
By Tim Connor
As a stream of south-bound drivers rolled down Division Street during today’s noon hour they were greeted by dozens of Spokanites who, with large signs and a bullhorn, were aiming a message toward City Hall.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJQpBmEhNos
“What we’re trying to do,” said Liz Moore of the Spokane Peace & Justice Action League (PJALS), “is say together, as a community that we don’t want this happening to anybody else’s son, or brother, or sister, or father. We want to see change in our community so that we can have independent investigations of police conduct. So that we can have a mechanism for change.”
“My biggest concern is what keeps them [the police] from killing someone else,” said Spokane VOICES director Kiondra Bullock.
Bullock was one of the organizers of today’s gathering.
“I told them it was important to come because they could be next,” she asked how she encouraged people to turn out for the event. “If they could kill Otto Zehm, if they could cheat Shonto Pete, what says they won’t kill you? What says you won’t be shot, or beaten or brutally attacked by the police? Those two men didn’t ask to be assaulted. Are you asking for it? No. But what’s stopping it from happening again.”
Shonto Pete, the living symbol for the cause of police accountability in Spokane was there too. Pete somehow survived being shot in the head as he fled from an off-duty Spokane Police officer in downtown Spokane in early 2007. His experience has inspired an energetic push from the city’s Native American community for police accountability reforms.
“I come here today to support the family and friends of Otto Zehm,” Pete said. “Two months after I got shot, my sister was also murdered. So I know what the family and friends are going through because I’ve personally gone through it. A lot of these people here are also my supporters in what I’ve gone through, so I’ve come here and we all stand united in one cause, to get some police accountability.”
Thursday’s demonstration came a day after Federal District Court Judge Lonny Suko ruled in favor of the Zehm family by granting the Center for Justice’s motion to amend the Zehm estate’s civil complaint filed a year ago against the City of Spokane.
Specifically, Judge Suko will allow the Center to advance arguments in the following areas.
1) To add information that, in the Center’s view, supports the allegation that the City “affirmatively endorsed” the conduct of Spokane police officer Karl. S. Thompson. Thompson was the first officer to encounter Otto Zehm in a north side convenience store on March 18, 2006 and, thus far, is the only named plaintiff in the federal criminal trial scheduled for later this year. The family was granted permission to add the argument that when the City gave Officer Thompsons new responsibilities in charge of police training for critical incidents it was an endorsement of his conduct in assaulting Zehm.
2) To add a new cause of action under Washington’s public records act (PRA) alleging that the City wrongfully withheld a partial transcript of a 9-1-1 call and a notebook belonging to then-Acting Police Chief Jim Nicks, in which Nicks made chronological entries of events related to Zehm’s arrest and subsequent events related to the investigation of the incident.
3) To add a breach of contract claim in lieu of an earlier motion for contempt that Judge Suko had previously dismissed. The breach of contract is tied to a “non-disclosure” agreement reached between the City and the Center for Justice on May 30, 2006. The Center alleges the City almost immediately began violating the order by disclosing confidential portions of Otto Zehm’s autopsy report. Originally, the City argued that Judge Suko did not have authority to impose contempt against the City for alleged violations of the agreement. The family responded to that argument by offering an alternative basis for enforcing the family’s rights– breach of contract.
4) To add an allegation that from May 31, 2006 to at least September of last year, the City maintained a publicly accessible electronic web page that disclosed information that violated Otto Zehm’s privacy rights and was a “continuing violation” of the May 30, 2006 contract between the City and the Center for Justice.
“I come here today to support the family and friends of Otto Zehm. Two months after I got shot, my sister was also murdered. So I know what the family and friends are going through because I’ve personally gone through it. A lot of these people here are also my supporters in what I’ve gone through, so I’ve come here and we all stand united in one cause, to get some police accountability.”–Shonto Pete at Thursday’s gathering.
The procedural motions in the Zehm civil case are being heard even though the substantive adjudication of the case is on hold pending the resolution of the federal criminal case against Officer Thompson that is slated to go to trial this summer.
“What Judge Suko has ruled is that, based on the information the U.S. Attorney has turned up, the plaintiffs [the Zehm estate] have more information to understand the legal violations being alleged,” said the Center for Justice’s Chief Catalyst Breean Beggs.
“On the one hand, we’ve been slowed down by the criminal proceedings because our case [the federal civil case] has been put on hold,” Beggs said. “On the other hand, the power that the federal government has to use the FBI and the grand jury has led to the discovery of evidence that we were entitled to have but which we were denied access to.”
Beggs also expressed concern with what he sees as the city’s political leaders not being proactive in resolving broader issues of police accountability. Leaders could use City Legal to help it implement what City leaders consider fair resolutions to these problems, Beggs says. Instead, he added, they seem to defer to City Legal and further delay “mending the rents in the social fabric” caused by these violent incidents.
At today’s demonstration on north Division, Moore says she was encouraging both those who came and those who couldn’t attend the gathering to mark the day by calling their city council representatives and voicing support for a new police reform ordinance that PJALS and other coalition groups, including the Center for Justice, formally proposed in early February.
Among those attending the demonstration today was former Center for Justice attorney Terri Sloyer, who became deeply involved in the developing the case in 2006 and has been an important voice for independent police oversight. As she watched the gathering unfold today with motorists honking horns in support of the demonstration and organizers passing a bullhorn around, Sloyer said she was thinking back to the early days of her involvement in the case on behalf of the Zehm family.
“Otto’s the face now of this movement,” she said. “And I think that would kind of make him smile just based on all the research I’ve done because he played in a garage band and probably thought of himself, I’m assuming, as a little bit of a rock star.”
Then she added: “But I don’t want us to ever get so far away with the political issues that we ever forget that on this day, at 6:23, this man walked into that convenience store and never left of his own accord. I think that should be foremost in our minds today.”
You can see our full video interview with Terri about Otto Zehm on the Center for Justice’s Facebook page which you can link to here.
–CFJ
