Seattle outlet wants activists to flood Office of Police Accountability with complaints: 'If we report enough cops ...'

An arts and entertainment publication in Seattle has called upon locals to inundate the city's Office of Police Accountability with complaints against cops in hopes of effecting change at the Seattle Police Department.

Earlier this week, a blog post in the Stranger encouraged Seattleites to report instances of officers driving "badly" or appearing to ignore posted traffic signs. It also gives readers detailed instructions about filing reports.

"If we report enough cops for driving badly," the subheadline reads, "maybe they’ll stop killing us and costing us money."

The post admits that minor alleged traffic violations likely are not enough to have a cop "fired," but author Ashley Nerbovig indicates that having cops fired is not necessarily the ultimate goal of the project. Rather, Nerbovig hopes that so many complaints are issued at the OPA that "SPD’s top brass" will come to view more and more officers as "a lawsuit liability" and then "start cracking down" on them for their driving.

Conservative talk show host Jason Rantz claimed that OPA director Gino Betts tacitly invited such a complaint campaign by stating that his office would investigate many seemingly frivolous reports, including those about "driving in bus lanes" and "not using turn signals."

Betts, an activist former prosecutor, has gone on record to complain about unfair treatment as "a young black boy growing up on the south side of Chicago." According to a video promoting his office's work, Betts employees a few officers and a handful of civilians — including a young woman whose desk area is arrayed with Hello Kitty posters — to investigate complaints against police.

Rantz argued that for many cops, even those who are ultimately exonerated, the process is the punishment. "They’re put in a position to explain why they faced complaints to begin with, and in this case, traffic violations on the job could lead to dozens of complaints," Rantz said.

Rantz also noted that officers sometimes have to bypass established traffic rules to perform their sworn duties properly. As examples, Rantz claimed that officers ought to exceed the speed limit when driving to the location of a mass shooting, park in bus lanes to apprehend thieves, and even blow red lights at deserted intersections when a person's life may be at stake.

When good cops constantly fear social or departmental reprisal for real or perceived missteps, victims are the ones who suffer most, Rantz said. "If an officer doesn’t speed on his way to a shooting because he or she would face a 20th politically motivated complaint, that will be more blood on activists’ hands," he wrote.

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