Seattle cop who killed Che Taylor spotted on riot duty

Left: Det. Michael Spaulding working at the barricades around the intersection of 11th and Pine, which has been a flashpoint for demonstrations following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. (Justin Ward). Right: Che Taylor, the man Spaulding and fellow detective Scott Miller killed in 2016 (Dept. of Corrections/ Public Domain)

For Andre Taylor, the protests that have erupted in Seattle since George Floyd’s death are deeply personal. One of the leading local figures of the movement, Taylor founded the organization Not This Time after Seattle police shot and killed his younger brother Che in 2016. His activism which was crucial in passing Initiative 940, which amended a section of Washington State law that made it all but impossible to bring criminal charges against officers for deadly use of force.

Prior to I940, the law’s governing justifiable homicide by police set a high threshold requiring demonstrable malice to be proved before an officer could be charged. The two who killed Che — Michael Spaulding and Scott Miller — were returned to duty after a judicial inquest cleared them of any wrongdoing.

But a lot of questions were left unanswered.

Spaulding and Miller were plainclothes detectives working a drug case. Che was not the target, but the officers claim that moved to arrest him after they saw him with a firearm holstered on his hip, which was a violation of the terms of his parole. At the time that he was shot, he was standing at the passenger side of his car with the door open.

Only a portion of incident was captured by the dash cam of a responding marked unit that arrived on the scene just…