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Seattle police need to clean house

Justin Ward
7 min readAug 17, 2020

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Some of SPD’s worst officers are the best paid.

Seattle Police Department deploys blast balls against demonstrators on July 25, 2020 (Derek Simeone / CC-BY)

In 2011, a get-together in South Seattle ended just about as badly as a party could. Some folks were listening to some tunes and drinking in their friend’s backyard when their fun was suddenly interrupted by some unwanted guests: The Seattle Police Department.

Three officers responding to a noise complaint asked to be let into the backyard but the tenant demanded a warrant. When they couldn’t show one, he asked them to leave. And after some back and forth in the front yard, Sgt. Bruce Creamer had the tenant arrested for obstruction. From the other side of the fence, the guests started yelling for him to be released.

By that time, six or seven more police had arrived on the scene. Witnesses heard an officer scream “C’mon motherfuckers, let’s do this!” before they burst through the gate. One cop, later identified in a lawsuit as David Bauer, grabbed a shovel from the yard and was using it like a riot stick. He struck one of the guests in the head, splitting his scalp open. Shortly thereafter he bashed two women with it, according to the court complaint.

The three of them were later diagnosed with various forms of blunt trauma injuries.

The boyfriend of one of the women said something to the effect of, “Hey, why are you hitting her?” The…

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Justin Ward
Justin Ward

Written by Justin Ward

Journalist and activist. Founder and co-chair of DivestSPD. Bylines at SPLC, The Baffler, GEN, USA Today. Follow on Twitter: @justwardoctrine, @DivestSPD

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