OK, they want police to wear body cameras to document violent
encounters. But then, they show officers inside break rooms
and what they have on walls and on shelves.
Serious violation of privacy!

from
https://mynorthwest.com/3908733/rantz-seattle-times-leads-charge-in-transparent-anti-police-hit-piece/

Rantz: Seattle Times leads charge in transparent anti-police hit piece
Jul 13, 2023, 5:55 PM

Seattle Police tombstone...
Zoomed-in screenshot of the body cam footage displaying a mock tombstone
with the name Damarius Butts and the date he was killed by SPD in the
bicycle repair room. (KIRO 7)

Share
BY JASON RANTZ
The Jason Rantz Show, 3pm-7pm on KTTH
The Seattle Times is leading the charge in a transparent hit piece
against the Seattle Police Department suspiciously timed to coincide
with a decision over the federal consent decree and increased public
support for police.

Mike Carter, who owns the anti-police beat at the Times, published his
hit piece seemingly with the help of the law firm McDonald Hoague &
Bayless, which is suing the city and police over an anti-graffiti law.
The firm acquired bodycam footage taken from a bicycle repair room at
the East Precinct, not merely a “break room” as was inaccurately
reported. It’s from January 2, 2021, after the SPD sustained months of
violent rallies and riots — and an armed insurrection that led to the
Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ).

We should have seen this hit piece coming. Whenever there is too much
goodwill offered towards cops, you can count on partisan voices to try
to change the public’s view.

More from Jason Rantz: Seattle Times staff concerned over political
bias, low pay

Selectively highlighting “controversial” tombstone at Seattle Police
repair room
Carter’s reporting focuses on the two items in the room that he believes
would offend the public: a “mock tombstone” and a Donald Trump flag.

The video shows an officer stored a tombstone display, reportedly
created by protesters and left outside the precinct, with the name
Damarius Butts and the date when he was killed by police. Protesters
used this display to accuse police of murdering a black man during the
Black Lives Matter protests and riots. Butts was killed after committing
an armed robbery and trying to murder police officers, shooting three,
one of whom was seriously wounded with a bullet to the chin.

At least one other protester-created “art” was also stored in the
bicycle repair room. The video captures the image of a board (presumably
used to board up the windows to protect the building from the radicals
seeking to burn it down or blow it up) with a black fist spray-painted
on it. Why isn’t this a bigger piece of the story? Because it would
establish an inconvenient fact that the officers did not create the
tombstone.

More from Jason Rantz: Seattle councilmember Andrew Lewis keeps claiming
false campaign endorsement

The framing is meant to invoke anger
The language Carter uses to discuss the tombstone — “mock” — is correct.
But it also seems intended to confuse people into thinking the tombstone
was mocking the death. Indeed, Carter Ann Butts, the shooter’s mother,
is demanding an apology because she believes the cops were “joking”
about the death.

“I can’t express how hurtful it was to learn that SPD endorsed joking
about the killing of my son by displaying a fake tombstone with his name
on it,” she said in a statement through her attorney.

While one can understand a mother mourning the death of her son, even if
his own actions led to his death, it should be made clear that Butts was
not a victim of police brutality; he was a clear danger. It’s why
officers were cleared of wrongdoing during a King County inquest
intended to stack the odds against officers to make prosecution easier —
a concession to the Black Lives Matter activist crowds demanding
criminal justice reforms. And no, the SPD did not “endorse” any joke.

It’s unclear how long the tombstone and board were stored in the bicycle
repair room; but we’re supposed to believe command staff should have
known it was there. I suspect the room is referred to as a “break room”
to give off the false impression that many people would see the items
stored there. But even if they did, the items weren’t there in any way
indicating it was used to mock or joke about Butts or the protesters.

The Trump flag
It was an error in judgment for any officer to post the Trump flag,
which is overtly political and prominently displayed — even if it was,
perhaps, posted ironically. It is, after all, posted next to a giant
image of the so-called “toughest animal on Earth.” It’s effectively a
posting of a meme, which also escaped the focus of the Times piece.

But the former president broke progressives and with a newspaper like
the Times so overtly partisan against Trump (and conservatives),
officers should have known that if the image got out, it would earn
rebuke and lead to controversy, even if it is contrived. It is an easily
predictable reaction.

And let me disabuse you of the notion that a Clinton, Biden, or Black
Lives Matter flag would instigate even a fraction of the condemnation
from the Times (if any at all) if it was hanging in place of the Trump
flag. And given the fact that you still have city leaders and activist
who have not condemned the violence against cops nor the signs and
graffiti promoting the death of cops, the phony condemnation is little
more than performative politics.

The Trump flag is more of an error in judgment than the tombstone and
black fist board. Is it possible that those two items were kept there as
reminders that the people seeking to not just defund them but physically
harm them is based on a lie that they’re murdering innocent black men?
Yes. But that’s not offensive.

More from Jason Rantz: Washington DOC brags its closing prisons during
crime crisis

Why the smear right now?
This video is from 2021, before any substantial BLM-generated reforms
were fully implemented. Even if one were to naively believe the
officers’ motivations were to offend, which the Times seems to want you
to believe, no reasonable person should judge the entire department, nor
pretend that there has been no cultural shift amongst the staff. While
the Radical Left seem okay judging an entire profession by a handful of
uncommon incidents, the rest of us should reject that standard.

But the timing of this story, to me, seems suspicious.

I’m not privy to the timeline of when either the lawyers or the Times
received the video, but it’s hard to ignore that a judge is currently
deciding whether or not the SPD will be released from a federal consent
decree. And this video is being used by activists to pressure the judge
to decide the culture hasn’t changed.

Consent decree and polling
Joel Merkel Jr., co-Chair of the Seattle Community Police Commission — a
self-governed civilian activist group that oversees the department —
called out cultural issues.

“I was horrified that this was something that would be displayed in a
break room of the Seattle Police Department,” Merkel said. “This is a
culture that just cannot exist in any police department, much less a
police department that’s under a federal consent decree … to have a
tombstone for him in their break room, while his inquest into the
circumstances of his death had already begun, is just absolutely appalling.”

There’s also been recent polls showing the public wants SPD to be
involved in Seattle’s drug crisis. That must anger the newspaper’s
left-wing reporting staff who don’t do a very good job of hiding their
political bias.

Listen to The Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3:00 p.m. –
7:00 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). He is the
author of the book What’s Killing America: Inside the Radical Left’s
Tragic Destruction of Our Cities. Subscribe to the podcast. Follow
@JasonRantz on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Check back frequently
for more news and analysis.