Post by KC on Mar 9, 2006 0:32:39 GMT -5
03/08/2006 - Sherry Reynolds was trying to do the right thing.
She saw what appeared to be two thugs beating a homeless man near a Ballard grocery store parking lot.
"Stop, I called the police!" she yelled.
Their response: "We are the police."
That night, she complained about the beating of a handcuffed suspect to the King County Sheriff's Office Internal Investigations Unit.
The cops were never disciplined, but Reynolds was charged with obstructing justice. Several months and several thousand dollars in legal fees later, she was acquitted by a judge who questioned whether the officers were telling the truth.
She believes the charge against her was retaliation, an attempt by the officers to cover up their own misconduct. So did the FBI, whose agents investigated the officers' actions and submitted the case for criminal prosecution under federal civil rights law. The Justice Department declined to prosecute.
But a few weeks ago, in an unrelated case, three of the officers involved -- Joseph Abreu III, Bruce Matthews and Garrett Jorgensen -- were branded as cheats and liars by their own department. They were found guilty after a Sheriff's Internal Investigation Unit inquiry of "Serious misconduct: Making false or fraudulent reports, statements, committing acts of dishonesty" involving off-duty work.
This story was prepared primarily from public records, including audio recordings of Reynolds' call to 911 and of her trial. It also draws from notes she prepared for the trial. While Reynolds, 46, talked initially to the Seattle P-I, she later decided not to participate in the production of the story. Reynolds moved after the incident and is working out of state.
Numerous calls seeking comment from the four King County officers involved in the bus shelter incident were not returned.
Reynolds' ordeal began four years ago, in February 2002, when she was running errands in preparation for a birthday dinner. The medical software consultant and former volunteer firefighter parked her car at the Safeway store on the corner of Northwest Market Street and 15th Avenue Northwest in Ballard to pick up a carton of milk.
As Reynolds got out of her car, she heard raised voices at a nearby bus shelter, she wrote in notes prepared for her trial. She glanced over and noticed a dark van with the side door open parked next to the bus shelter. She saw "three or four pretty scruffy guys in dark clothing at the bus stop standing unusually close to each other, face to face."
One man -- later identified as Jose Luis Martinez-Pineda -- was backing up to a fence as a larger man, later identified as Detective Bruce Matthews, "kept yelling in his face," she wrote in a detailed timeline of the incident. "Matthews started hitting him with what seemed to be his knees and fists into his stomach and then using his fists and forearms on the back of Martinez's body. Martinez didn't seem to fight back at all. (Officer Joe) Abreu started to hit the kid also."
Martinez "didn't put his hands up to defend himself at all. In fact he seemed to be taking the hits with his hands behind him and was forced into the fence until he was literally beaten so hard that he seemed to collapse down onto the ground."
Reynolds later discovered that throughout the beating, Martinez and two other men suspected of drinking beer in the shelter had already been cuffed with their hands behind their backs.
Reynolds headed toward the melee, yelling, "Stop, I called the police!" Although she had not yet called 911, she hoped her claim would stop the beating.
"One of them yelled back what sounded like, 'We are the police.'
"So I yelled 'If you are the police, where are your badges? You have to show badges!'
"They yelled, 'We don't have to show you anything.' One of them continued to scream at the man on the ground, 'Do you want some more?' and pushed his knee down on Martinez's back."
"I honestly still didn't think they were police at this point because of their behavior, how they were dressed, the absence of a police car. I also seriously doubted that the police would hit a guy like that when he wasn't resisting them or fighting them as far as I could see."
Reynolds got within 25 feet of the bus shelter that was separated from the Safeway parking lot by a 5-foot-high wall.
"Suddenly, poof, a large new guy wearing the same type of black jacket suddenly appeared and started talking to me," Reynolds wrote in her synopsis.
Reynolds walked closer to the man, Officer Garrett Jorgensen, and asked him: "Do you have a badge? If you are the police then what is your badge number?" Reynolds said Jorgensen replied: "We don't have badge numbers and if you don't shut up, you will be arrested."
Reynolds wrote in her synopsis that she pointed at Matthews and said, "I want his badge number."
At this point, Jorgensen moved quickly toward Reynolds, pointed toward her and threatened her with arrest, Reynolds wrote.
She responded: "Look, I am not going anywhere until you prove you are really the police. Show me some ID."
"His face turned crimson and he suddenly reached up so fast that again I thought he was going to hit me," Reynolds wrote.
"He pulled and grabbed at a Velcro flap on the top of his ski jacket. Under the flap in bright yellow letters it said, 'SHERIFF.' "
Jorgensen told her that "for all he knew I could be the sister of one of the guys they were going to cite and arrest," she wrote. "I pointed out that I doubted that a 40-something white woman with a car full of melting groceries would be related to a homeless Hispanic guy at a bus stop."
"He told me I had totally misread the situation and had put myself at risk. I should have shut up.
"But I also told him that even if I misread it, that doesn't relieve you from what I saw happen. It was an excessive and brutal use of force.' "
Reynolds walked to the Safeway and called 911. Later that Monday evening, Reynolds left a voice mail message at the King County Sheriff's Internal Investigations Unit. She called again the next day. On Wednesday, she got a call back from Sgt. Rob Mathis, an IIU investigator, who she says suggested that she call the officers' supervisor, Sgt. Jim Laing of the sheriff's metro unit.
Then Mathis called Laing to ask about the incident.
On Thursday, Reynolds got a call from Laing. "He listened to my entire story and then told me that I could be a suspect and a complaint could be filed on me so he really shouldn't talk to me since he could be called to testify against me."
Laing returned calls from the Seattle P-I but would not comment on the incident.
On Friday, she again reached Mathis, who she says told her that he couldn't talk to her or take a complaint from her because she was a suspect.
Mathis, contacted recently, has a vague recollection of the 4-year-old case. But he did say that Internal Investigations officers do not pursue cases in which the complainant is a suspect because if they did so, everyone charged with a crime could use internal investigations as a ploy to deflect attention from their crimes. Sheriff's spokesman Bob Conner elaborated saying that "in most cases, they won't start their investigation until the criminal case is adjudicated."
In June 2002, the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office sent Reynolds a summons accusing her of obstructing a law enforcement officer, a misdemeanor.
The trial
On Feb. 4, 2003, Reynolds' trial began in King County District Court before Judge Victoria Seitz. Her attorney was John Muenster, a well-known criminal defense lawyer with expertise in police misconduct.
Abreu was the first to testify, saying that he and his three partners had been driving an unmarked black van when they spotted three men drinking in the bus shelter. They pulled in front of the shelter and activated hidden strobe lights on the front and rear of the vehicle.
"Without emergency lights, you probably would not know" that it's a police vehicle, said Abreu under cross-examination by Muenster.
Abreu said he was wearing a pair of jeans, a button-down shirt, a jacket and a black baseball cap with sheriff's insignias on it. He said he was wearing a badge outside his clothing.
"I was in the process of handcuffing a suspect," said Abreu. "Detective (Bruce) Matthews was doing the same thing. In the process, I saw someone about midway in the Safeway parking lot ... coming, walking I should say, at a very fast pace heading in our direction. The person was looking at us. And I drew my own conclusion that this person may be involved with the three people" we were arresting.
He identified that person as Reynolds, who was sitting in front of him in the courtroom.
Abreu said he shouted to his partners: "Heads up! Someone coming from the lot." Matthews acknowledged the warning and gave a quick glance in Reynolds' direction, Abreu testified. The woman was shouting something, but Abreu couldn't hear it.
"The person was angling in a straight line towards us and I was shouting, 'Police. Stay back.' "
"As she got closer, she directed her attention to Detective Matthews. She began shouting: 'I want your badge number.' "
Abreu said that he "was very concerned" that Reynolds was going to climb over the chain-link fence separating the parking lot from the bus shelter. "It became a threat to all of us as she got within 30 feet."
"Detective Matthews' suspect was not under control yet," said Abreu. When Matthews' suspect tried to kick him in the groin, Abreu said, he ran over to help Matthews subdue the man.
Abreu said he and Matthews "had to scuffle with him (Matthews's suspect) to bring him into control."
Matthews testified next. As he made his arrest, "I did manage to handcuff him without really a struggle. He made an attempt to knee me in the groin and I put him on the sidewalk."
Matthews said that as Reynolds approached demanding his badge number, "My attention had been turned from touching him and looking at him to touching him and looking at her. I could feel him turning in my grasp, and his right knee I believe was aimed at my groin but it hit on the inside of my left thigh."
Matthews, also a plainclothes detective, was wearing blue jeans and what he called a "hidden agenda jacket" which has panels on it that flip down revealing the word "SHERIFF." He said his badge, hanging on a leather strap, was on the outside of his clothing.
Matthews contradicted himself by testifying first that he identified himself as a police officer, but later said, "I didn't identify myself to her and tell her I was a police officer."
Jorgensen later testified that he did not identify himself as a police officer either.
He said he told Reynolds she was under arrest for interfering with the officers, but acknowledged that he did not take her into custody.
Reynolds later testified that she saw no lights, no badges or anything that would have identified the detectives as police officers. Jorgensen didn't reveal the word "SHERIFF" on his jacket until much later in a very contentious conversation, she said. And she asserts that Jorgensen never said anything to her about being under arrest.
"I honestly didn't know who he was," Reynolds testified.
At this point, her attorney, Muenster, sought to enter into evidence an audiotape of the 911 call Reynolds made after her conversation with Jorgensen.
Prosecutor Kathy Ungerman fought to keep the tape out of evidence, saying it was irrelevant.
But the judge overruled her objection, saying the tape offered information on Reynolds' state of mind and also "tends to contradict or at least call into question the officer's veracity at least as to the amount of time" that Reynolds spent confronting the officers about what she believed to be an unprovoked beating. The timing of the 911 call proved the length of the incident was much shorter than the approximately 30 minutes the officers claimed. (See timeline produced by Reynolds.)
The 911 tape opens with Reynolds telling the dispatcher: "Hi. I'm at the Safeway parking lot out in Ballard. Is there a King County police action taking place, because it looked like a fight was going on. And I'm told by one person to back off. And he doesn't have an ID showing or anything and he said that if you don't shut up you'll be arrested also. It looks like they're being excessively violent with the person they are trying to arrest."
Both Reynolds and the dispatcher were initially confused as to why sheriff's officers would be operating in Seattle until the dispatcher realized that the officers were with the Sheriff's Metro Transit unit. The dispatcher then transferred Reynolds to the King County 911 dispatchers.
Reynolds testified that when she and Jorgensen confronted each other, "he questioned me repeatedly about who was I to give advice about how they should do their job. And he asked, 'What page of the policy and procedure manual does it say we have to show our badges?' "
But the manual does require officers to give names and badge numbers to citizens when asked, said Sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart. The exception is when doing so might endanger deputies or interfere with their work. In this case, Reynolds got the information "as soon as possible," Urquhart said.
Asked by Muenster if she had done anything to obstruct the officers, she replied: "I didn't know they were officers."
Ungerman did not cross-examine Reynolds.
The judge, in ruling Reynolds not guilty, cut to the heart of the matter.
Reynolds testified that the men being arrested "were being beaten up needlessly, which is how it appeared to her, which is why she was so concerned," the judge said.
"It's clear that the officers felt that she was interfering. Clear that they were aware that she was there and didn't want her to come any closer. Wanted her to stay out of it and they did not appreciate having her say, 'Stop it, I'm calling the police, I want your badge number.' Clearly they did not. They didn't want anybody else to be involved in this. Or witness it. They didn't appreciate that. No question about it.
"But the crime is not committed when the officers don't like it. She had no reason to interfere either. She is just your basically highly educated, accomplished person who is minding their own business, planning a birthday party, going to the grocery store like you or I will do tonight or tomorrow or did yesterday."
Reynolds walked out of court victorious. Then she called the FBI. In a follow-up letter to FBI agents, Reynolds wrote that she "was falsely arrested solely as a result of my attempt to report what I saw. I feel that the charges are actually simply an attempt to intimidate me as a witness to what I feel was police misconduct and/or to protect them (the officers) from my filing a formal complaint with the Sheriff."
The FBI opened a criminal, civil-rights investigation against the officers. When they completed the investigation, it was referred to the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., for prosecution.
Albert Moskowitz, chief of the criminal section of the Justice Department Civil Rights Division, wrote Reynolds in May 2003 that his office had "concluded that the evidence is not sufficient to establish a prosecutable violation of the federal criminal civil rights statutes."
Urquhart rejects the notion that the officers retaliated against Reynolds by charging her with obstruction. "Categorically, Reynolds was not charged because she complained to (the) Internal Investigations Unit," he said. "There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support that allegation. The IIU investigator, Rob Mathis, spoke with the Metro sergeant, reviewed the reports, and after speaking with Reynolds, determined her complaint was without merit."
Asked how the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office evaluates reports alleging that suspects resisted arrest, interfered or assaulted an officer to identify those that might have been filed to cover for police misconduct, Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Mark Larson said: "We operate under the belief that police officers are going to accurately report events to us. So that may be some institutional bias we've got. But on the other hand, good prosecutors always keep an open mind. You frankly always look at the motives and biases of any witnesses, including cops."
She saw what appeared to be two thugs beating a homeless man near a Ballard grocery store parking lot.
"Stop, I called the police!" she yelled.
Their response: "We are the police."
That night, she complained about the beating of a handcuffed suspect to the King County Sheriff's Office Internal Investigations Unit.
The cops were never disciplined, but Reynolds was charged with obstructing justice. Several months and several thousand dollars in legal fees later, she was acquitted by a judge who questioned whether the officers were telling the truth.
She believes the charge against her was retaliation, an attempt by the officers to cover up their own misconduct. So did the FBI, whose agents investigated the officers' actions and submitted the case for criminal prosecution under federal civil rights law. The Justice Department declined to prosecute.
But a few weeks ago, in an unrelated case, three of the officers involved -- Joseph Abreu III, Bruce Matthews and Garrett Jorgensen -- were branded as cheats and liars by their own department. They were found guilty after a Sheriff's Internal Investigation Unit inquiry of "Serious misconduct: Making false or fraudulent reports, statements, committing acts of dishonesty" involving off-duty work.
This story was prepared primarily from public records, including audio recordings of Reynolds' call to 911 and of her trial. It also draws from notes she prepared for the trial. While Reynolds, 46, talked initially to the Seattle P-I, she later decided not to participate in the production of the story. Reynolds moved after the incident and is working out of state.
Numerous calls seeking comment from the four King County officers involved in the bus shelter incident were not returned.
Reynolds' ordeal began four years ago, in February 2002, when she was running errands in preparation for a birthday dinner. The medical software consultant and former volunteer firefighter parked her car at the Safeway store on the corner of Northwest Market Street and 15th Avenue Northwest in Ballard to pick up a carton of milk.
As Reynolds got out of her car, she heard raised voices at a nearby bus shelter, she wrote in notes prepared for her trial. She glanced over and noticed a dark van with the side door open parked next to the bus shelter. She saw "three or four pretty scruffy guys in dark clothing at the bus stop standing unusually close to each other, face to face."
One man -- later identified as Jose Luis Martinez-Pineda -- was backing up to a fence as a larger man, later identified as Detective Bruce Matthews, "kept yelling in his face," she wrote in a detailed timeline of the incident. "Matthews started hitting him with what seemed to be his knees and fists into his stomach and then using his fists and forearms on the back of Martinez's body. Martinez didn't seem to fight back at all. (Officer Joe) Abreu started to hit the kid also."
Martinez "didn't put his hands up to defend himself at all. In fact he seemed to be taking the hits with his hands behind him and was forced into the fence until he was literally beaten so hard that he seemed to collapse down onto the ground."
Reynolds later discovered that throughout the beating, Martinez and two other men suspected of drinking beer in the shelter had already been cuffed with their hands behind their backs.
Reynolds headed toward the melee, yelling, "Stop, I called the police!" Although she had not yet called 911, she hoped her claim would stop the beating.
"One of them yelled back what sounded like, 'We are the police.'
"So I yelled 'If you are the police, where are your badges? You have to show badges!'
"They yelled, 'We don't have to show you anything.' One of them continued to scream at the man on the ground, 'Do you want some more?' and pushed his knee down on Martinez's back."
"I honestly still didn't think they were police at this point because of their behavior, how they were dressed, the absence of a police car. I also seriously doubted that the police would hit a guy like that when he wasn't resisting them or fighting them as far as I could see."
Reynolds got within 25 feet of the bus shelter that was separated from the Safeway parking lot by a 5-foot-high wall.
"Suddenly, poof, a large new guy wearing the same type of black jacket suddenly appeared and started talking to me," Reynolds wrote in her synopsis.
Reynolds walked closer to the man, Officer Garrett Jorgensen, and asked him: "Do you have a badge? If you are the police then what is your badge number?" Reynolds said Jorgensen replied: "We don't have badge numbers and if you don't shut up, you will be arrested."
Reynolds wrote in her synopsis that she pointed at Matthews and said, "I want his badge number."
At this point, Jorgensen moved quickly toward Reynolds, pointed toward her and threatened her with arrest, Reynolds wrote.
She responded: "Look, I am not going anywhere until you prove you are really the police. Show me some ID."
"His face turned crimson and he suddenly reached up so fast that again I thought he was going to hit me," Reynolds wrote.
"He pulled and grabbed at a Velcro flap on the top of his ski jacket. Under the flap in bright yellow letters it said, 'SHERIFF.' "
Jorgensen told her that "for all he knew I could be the sister of one of the guys they were going to cite and arrest," she wrote. "I pointed out that I doubted that a 40-something white woman with a car full of melting groceries would be related to a homeless Hispanic guy at a bus stop."
"He told me I had totally misread the situation and had put myself at risk. I should have shut up.
"But I also told him that even if I misread it, that doesn't relieve you from what I saw happen. It was an excessive and brutal use of force.' "
Reynolds walked to the Safeway and called 911. Later that Monday evening, Reynolds left a voice mail message at the King County Sheriff's Internal Investigations Unit. She called again the next day. On Wednesday, she got a call back from Sgt. Rob Mathis, an IIU investigator, who she says suggested that she call the officers' supervisor, Sgt. Jim Laing of the sheriff's metro unit.
Then Mathis called Laing to ask about the incident.
On Thursday, Reynolds got a call from Laing. "He listened to my entire story and then told me that I could be a suspect and a complaint could be filed on me so he really shouldn't talk to me since he could be called to testify against me."
Laing returned calls from the Seattle P-I but would not comment on the incident.
On Friday, she again reached Mathis, who she says told her that he couldn't talk to her or take a complaint from her because she was a suspect.
Mathis, contacted recently, has a vague recollection of the 4-year-old case. But he did say that Internal Investigations officers do not pursue cases in which the complainant is a suspect because if they did so, everyone charged with a crime could use internal investigations as a ploy to deflect attention from their crimes. Sheriff's spokesman Bob Conner elaborated saying that "in most cases, they won't start their investigation until the criminal case is adjudicated."
In June 2002, the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office sent Reynolds a summons accusing her of obstructing a law enforcement officer, a misdemeanor.
The trial
On Feb. 4, 2003, Reynolds' trial began in King County District Court before Judge Victoria Seitz. Her attorney was John Muenster, a well-known criminal defense lawyer with expertise in police misconduct.
Abreu was the first to testify, saying that he and his three partners had been driving an unmarked black van when they spotted three men drinking in the bus shelter. They pulled in front of the shelter and activated hidden strobe lights on the front and rear of the vehicle.
"Without emergency lights, you probably would not know" that it's a police vehicle, said Abreu under cross-examination by Muenster.
Abreu said he was wearing a pair of jeans, a button-down shirt, a jacket and a black baseball cap with sheriff's insignias on it. He said he was wearing a badge outside his clothing.
"I was in the process of handcuffing a suspect," said Abreu. "Detective (Bruce) Matthews was doing the same thing. In the process, I saw someone about midway in the Safeway parking lot ... coming, walking I should say, at a very fast pace heading in our direction. The person was looking at us. And I drew my own conclusion that this person may be involved with the three people" we were arresting.
He identified that person as Reynolds, who was sitting in front of him in the courtroom.
Abreu said he shouted to his partners: "Heads up! Someone coming from the lot." Matthews acknowledged the warning and gave a quick glance in Reynolds' direction, Abreu testified. The woman was shouting something, but Abreu couldn't hear it.
"The person was angling in a straight line towards us and I was shouting, 'Police. Stay back.' "
"As she got closer, she directed her attention to Detective Matthews. She began shouting: 'I want your badge number.' "
Abreu said that he "was very concerned" that Reynolds was going to climb over the chain-link fence separating the parking lot from the bus shelter. "It became a threat to all of us as she got within 30 feet."
"Detective Matthews' suspect was not under control yet," said Abreu. When Matthews' suspect tried to kick him in the groin, Abreu said, he ran over to help Matthews subdue the man.
Abreu said he and Matthews "had to scuffle with him (Matthews's suspect) to bring him into control."
Matthews testified next. As he made his arrest, "I did manage to handcuff him without really a struggle. He made an attempt to knee me in the groin and I put him on the sidewalk."
Matthews said that as Reynolds approached demanding his badge number, "My attention had been turned from touching him and looking at him to touching him and looking at her. I could feel him turning in my grasp, and his right knee I believe was aimed at my groin but it hit on the inside of my left thigh."
Matthews, also a plainclothes detective, was wearing blue jeans and what he called a "hidden agenda jacket" which has panels on it that flip down revealing the word "SHERIFF." He said his badge, hanging on a leather strap, was on the outside of his clothing.
Matthews contradicted himself by testifying first that he identified himself as a police officer, but later said, "I didn't identify myself to her and tell her I was a police officer."
Jorgensen later testified that he did not identify himself as a police officer either.
He said he told Reynolds she was under arrest for interfering with the officers, but acknowledged that he did not take her into custody.
Reynolds later testified that she saw no lights, no badges or anything that would have identified the detectives as police officers. Jorgensen didn't reveal the word "SHERIFF" on his jacket until much later in a very contentious conversation, she said. And she asserts that Jorgensen never said anything to her about being under arrest.
"I honestly didn't know who he was," Reynolds testified.
At this point, her attorney, Muenster, sought to enter into evidence an audiotape of the 911 call Reynolds made after her conversation with Jorgensen.
Prosecutor Kathy Ungerman fought to keep the tape out of evidence, saying it was irrelevant.
But the judge overruled her objection, saying the tape offered information on Reynolds' state of mind and also "tends to contradict or at least call into question the officer's veracity at least as to the amount of time" that Reynolds spent confronting the officers about what she believed to be an unprovoked beating. The timing of the 911 call proved the length of the incident was much shorter than the approximately 30 minutes the officers claimed. (See timeline produced by Reynolds.)
The 911 tape opens with Reynolds telling the dispatcher: "Hi. I'm at the Safeway parking lot out in Ballard. Is there a King County police action taking place, because it looked like a fight was going on. And I'm told by one person to back off. And he doesn't have an ID showing or anything and he said that if you don't shut up you'll be arrested also. It looks like they're being excessively violent with the person they are trying to arrest."
Both Reynolds and the dispatcher were initially confused as to why sheriff's officers would be operating in Seattle until the dispatcher realized that the officers were with the Sheriff's Metro Transit unit. The dispatcher then transferred Reynolds to the King County 911 dispatchers.
Reynolds testified that when she and Jorgensen confronted each other, "he questioned me repeatedly about who was I to give advice about how they should do their job. And he asked, 'What page of the policy and procedure manual does it say we have to show our badges?' "
But the manual does require officers to give names and badge numbers to citizens when asked, said Sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart. The exception is when doing so might endanger deputies or interfere with their work. In this case, Reynolds got the information "as soon as possible," Urquhart said.
Asked by Muenster if she had done anything to obstruct the officers, she replied: "I didn't know they were officers."
Ungerman did not cross-examine Reynolds.
The judge, in ruling Reynolds not guilty, cut to the heart of the matter.
Reynolds testified that the men being arrested "were being beaten up needlessly, which is how it appeared to her, which is why she was so concerned," the judge said.
"It's clear that the officers felt that she was interfering. Clear that they were aware that she was there and didn't want her to come any closer. Wanted her to stay out of it and they did not appreciate having her say, 'Stop it, I'm calling the police, I want your badge number.' Clearly they did not. They didn't want anybody else to be involved in this. Or witness it. They didn't appreciate that. No question about it.
"But the crime is not committed when the officers don't like it. She had no reason to interfere either. She is just your basically highly educated, accomplished person who is minding their own business, planning a birthday party, going to the grocery store like you or I will do tonight or tomorrow or did yesterday."
Reynolds walked out of court victorious. Then she called the FBI. In a follow-up letter to FBI agents, Reynolds wrote that she "was falsely arrested solely as a result of my attempt to report what I saw. I feel that the charges are actually simply an attempt to intimidate me as a witness to what I feel was police misconduct and/or to protect them (the officers) from my filing a formal complaint with the Sheriff."
The FBI opened a criminal, civil-rights investigation against the officers. When they completed the investigation, it was referred to the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., for prosecution.
Albert Moskowitz, chief of the criminal section of the Justice Department Civil Rights Division, wrote Reynolds in May 2003 that his office had "concluded that the evidence is not sufficient to establish a prosecutable violation of the federal criminal civil rights statutes."
Urquhart rejects the notion that the officers retaliated against Reynolds by charging her with obstruction. "Categorically, Reynolds was not charged because she complained to (the) Internal Investigations Unit," he said. "There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support that allegation. The IIU investigator, Rob Mathis, spoke with the Metro sergeant, reviewed the reports, and after speaking with Reynolds, determined her complaint was without merit."
Asked how the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office evaluates reports alleging that suspects resisted arrest, interfered or assaulted an officer to identify those that might have been filed to cover for police misconduct, Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Mark Larson said: "We operate under the belief that police officers are going to accurately report events to us. So that may be some institutional bias we've got. But on the other hand, good prosecutors always keep an open mind. You frankly always look at the motives and biases of any witnesses, including cops."
