By ERIC NALDER, LEWIS KAMB AND DANIEL LATHROP
Carl Sandidge and his cousin had just finished watching a movie downtown and were walking to a bus stop when an ordinary-looking white guy in a pickup truck yelled something about a flag.
His much taller cousin -- black, like Sandidge -- walked over to the truck to ask what was going on. The guy jumped out and grabbed him, throwing the cousin over the hood of the truck, Sandidge recalled.
Sandidge objected. He was pushed against a wall, received several electric shocks from a Taser, was forced to the ground and, while handcuffed, took a blow to the midsection, all 150 pounds of him.
At 5-foot-9 he has a body made more fragile to violence by the medicine he takes for sickle cell anemia, a potentially fatal hereditary disease.
It was his first scrape with the law in his 22 years. He was arrested for the gross misdemeanor of obstructing a public officer, as well as resisting arrest and assault.
It was also his introduction to the Seattle Police Department's West Precinct Anti-Crime Team, or ACT.
Most 'obstruct' arrests
The six officers in the West Precinct team make more arrests for the crime of obstructing a public officer, per cop, than any other unit in the Seattle Police Department, according to court records since January 2002 analyzed by the Seattle P-I.
Not far behind them on the list are the nearly 70 officers of the West Precinct's third watch, who often assist the team with nighttime and early morning arrests.
More than half of the top 20 list came from officers assigned at the time to the West Precinct. But a caution: It's almost impossible to isolate the top officer with complete confidence. The P-I based its ranking on a Seattle Municipal Court database of obstruction cases. A close review of selected records showed officers listed as the arresting cop in some cases were at the scene to assist. But there's no mistaking that West Precinct ACT would be on anybody's list of officers to watch.
Seattle police officials say it's not surprising West Precinct ACT officers rank so high. Capt. Steve Brown, West Precinct commander, noted that because of the concentration of nightclubs and alcohol-fueled incidents in the precinct's coverage area -- from Pioneer Square across downtown and through Magnolia -- there are typically more police-civilian interactions and proactive work from officers. It's a "very unique" part of the city, he said, where police are challenged to "maintain control."
The Anti-Crime Team is a "nimbler group of officers with extra training," Brown added. "Very dynamic."
Sometimes donning street-clothes, other times decked out in all-black "battle dress uniforms," the squad of highly trained, aggressive ACT officers is the Seattle Police Department's strike force. Their mission: to disrupt and remove the worst of the city's criminal street element.
"One of the most dangerous and thankless jobs in the department," wrote Zsolt Dornay Jr., a longtime ACT member, in an e-mail. Dornay, one of top 20 for obstruction arrests, currently is not assigned to the team and was not involved in the Sandidge case.
Public defender Sunil Abraham, who successfully defended Sandidge at his criminal trial, sees the anti-crime team differently.
"When these officers are rolling around town in the ACT team, they are supposed to be stopping crime before it occurs," said Abraham, who has defended many low-income African-Americans from obstruction charges. "My theory is they are creating crime."
In Sandidge's case, he points out, the only crime alleged was resisting police contact. The cousins were not suspected of breaking any law.
Police arrest African-Americans for the sole crime of obstructing -- when it is not accompanied by an underlying charge -- at a rate more than eight times as often as whites when population is taken into account, a Seattle P-I investigation of six years of Seattle Municipal Court records and data found.
For all races, about half of the obstructing cases are thrown out before they get to trial -- dismissed without penalty or ending in acquittals.
Officers citywide arrest people for obstructing -- basically, the crime of getting in a cop's way -- at a rate of more than one per day. But there are concentrations of obstruction arrests in pockets throughout the city, and the West Precinct territory is one of them.
During the same period analyzed, Anti-Crime Team arrests for stand-alone obstructing included 22 African-Americans, six whites, one Native American and one of Asian descent.
Seattle's first Anti-Crime Team began in the mid- to late-1980s, Brown said, with the explosion of crack cocaine. Open-air drug markets were popping up in neighborhoods around the city, creating huge problems.
Trained like beat cops to handle traditional 911 calls, ACT members also learned undercover and other high-risk policing techniques. Today, each of the department's five precincts use ACT teams in plainclothes, to serve warrants, in deployment teams for special operations or emphasis patrols, such as for vice or car prowls, Brown explained.
"It's a very broad range," he said. "They need to be highly skilled. They're essential to our deployment."
They are effective, Brown said. Earlier this month, ACT members worked a vice sting to successfully break up a prostitution ring, netting three pimps who were selling girls as young as 12 for sex.
The squad's aggressiveness explains why ACT members arrest more people for obstruction than any other squad.
"It's the proactive nature of the assignment they're in," Brown said. "They have a high number of contacts virtually every night."
Contacts like Sandidge.
The Sandidge case
ACT Officer Martin Harris, 41, testified at trial that he and his partner, David Blackmer, 38, were idling in a pickup truck near Macy's on a late August night in 2005 when Sandidge and his cousin walked by. Both cops rank in the P-I's list of the top 20 in the entire department for obstruction arrests.
Blackmer, a Native American, has been the subject of about a half-dozen unsustained complaints, including some in which he was accused of using racial epithets. Investigators rejected those allegations, records show.
Three months after the Sandidge incident, Blackmer drove a department-issued undercover car on personal business and got into a road rage incident, records show. Rather than reporting it to authorities, he used a police computer to locate the other driver and sent him an e-mail that said: "Hey, dumbass! Game on!" He got a 10-day suspension for that.
Blackmer was scanning his portable computer when Harris leaned over him to yell out the window at Sandidge's cousin, Derrick Frazier, ordering him to remove a bandana from his back pocket, which Harris had mistaken for a gang "flag," records show. No evidence was ever introduced that Frazier had gang connections.
The young cousins from the Kent area happened to be walking in a late-night war zone where there is a fight disturbance every night, according to Marcos Ortiz Jr., 35, a West Precinct officer who assisted with Sandidge's arrest and also testified.
ACT officers and others from the West Precinct scan the streets for certain jerseys, hats, tattoos, even certain ways a guy might tip his hat, Ortiz told the court.
Harris testified that Frazier walked up to his pickup truck and bumped it with his midsection -- an act the officer considered an assault on property. Harris decided that was "probable cause" for arrest, he told the jury, so he jumped out of the truck and grabbed Frazier.
The case is similar to hundreds of other obstruction arrests examined by the P-I, including many ACT and West Precinct arrests.
Obstruction usually starts with a minor event -- a bandana worn suspiciously, a littering violation, a shout to stop that is ignored or not heard, profanity or a verbal argument.
A civilian next does something police view with concern: a quick arm movement, a furtive gesture, a move toward the cop, or takes what the officer interprets to be a "fighting stance."
In response, the cop goes "hands on," as they like to say, or "suddenly attacks" as the defendants often claim.
Afterward, the officers write incident reports that fill in the details. If force was used, a mandatory use-of-force report is written.
"The importance of the obstruction arrest is really an officer-safety issue," City Attorney Tom Carr said. "When an officer is out there, dealing with individuals, sometimes they're all alone in a very dangerous situation."
Defense attorneys who closely examine such reports say the obstruction arrests too often appear to be a "cover charge" used to justify force.
"The most troubling subset of obstruction arrests is where the individual may be commenting or observing on police's interaction with another person, and they don't move away far enough or fast enough for the police," explained public defender Lisa Daugaard. "But that's constitutionally protected behavior."
With ACT, or other proactive police units, the obstruction arrest also is a tool for checking out the backgrounds of people walking or lurking on the streets late at night, cases show. They've cleared warrants, found drugs and, at the same time, arrested and found nothing.
They've also arrested people who they don't seem to like or who have otherwise upset them.
A 'catchall' charge
"It is unequivocally the biggest bullshit arrest in the Seattle Police Department," said one former West Precinct officer who sometimes worked with ACT officers and did not want to be identified.
In the officer's experience, race was not a factor in use of the arrest. But he added: "It is a catchall that cops used when they get pissed off at a 'suspect' or a 'suspect's friends.' "
That seems to be the case with Bogdan Mohora, an amateur photographer who, while walking near Pike Place Market on Nov. 2, 2006, encountered two West Precinct officers arresting a suspect.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, which later represented him, Mohora snapped only a few photos, then moved on. But later, a Seattle officer demanded his camera. When Mohora asked for an explanation, he was handcuffed and detained for more than an hour before police released him.
Mohora was never charged, and last year he won an $8,000 settlement from the city.
Deputy Police Chief Clark Kimerer said he has examined thousands of arrest and use-of-force reports and has never seen evidence that officers are abusing obstruction charges at ACT, the West Precinct or anywhere else. "The city of Seattle is at a 40-year low in crime right now," Kimerer added. "It didn't come that way by luck or by accident. We're doing it through a variety of different strategies, including being in places that normally people wouldn't like to be. We're doing what the public wants us to do."
From a safety standpoint, some downtown residents and business community activists say they've noticed a sharp decrease in street crime in recent months.
"I see a noticeable drop in criminal behavior in the public areas, and a significant drop in drug-dealing -- especially during daytime hours," said Craig Montgomery, former executive director of the Pioneer Square Community Association and a resident of downtown Seattle.
Stepped-up police activity is certainly one of the primary contributors, he said.
Cop punches cuffed man
Sandidge was startled by the way Harris slammed his cousin onto the truck hood and wrenched his arm to handcuff him. He said he objected, and Blackmer took him by the wrist and tried to put him to the ground. When that failed, he "pushed me into Macy's wall," Sandidge said.
"He said, 'Oh, you want to fight,' " Sandidge recalled.
Blackmer testified he asked Sandidge to leave and the young man complied. Then Sandidge returned to complain about his cousin's arrest.
He said Sandidge moved forward quickly, and it seemed he was going to physically interfere with his partner. If he was, he never got a chance.
Sandidge said the repeated jolts from Blackmer's Taser were "like a bad burn, going through your whole body." He said the officer "slammed my face into the ground." Before he handcuffed him, he said, Blackmer whispered in his ear: "When we get back to the station, I'm going to kick your little ass."
Ortiz said he punched Sandidge in the midsection while the young man was standing, handcuffed, because he was resisting Blackmer. Sandidge said he had no chance to resist. He was feeling sick by then, "like I was going to throw up."
The arrest and prosecution of Sandidge was clearly a "cover charge," said James Bible, president of the local branch of the NAACP and co-counsel for Sandidge at his trial.
Bible noted that two others involved in the incident -- Sandidge's cousin and a Kirkland teenager with an extensive juvenile record -- weren't prosecuted.
"The only person charged in this event is the one Tasered several times and punched in the stomach after he is handcuffed," Bible said.
Kimerer flatly dismissed the notion of a "cover charge."
"I think there's an extreme vested interest in the plaintiff's bar and among defense attorneys to legitimatize their plaintiffs and clients," he said.
Sixteen West Precinct officers have been sued or had claims filed against them during the past four years on allegations they used excessive force, including seven in cases that also involved obstruction arrests.
Lawsuits, of course, do not equal guilt. But former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper said the complaints about obstructing arrests should not be ignored. He studied obstruction and resisting arrests as long as 30 years ago when he was a captain in San Diego. Vague laws and officer discretion contribute to the problem.
"When police officers don't have a handy tool, a justifiable arrest, they look for ways to establish probable cause," said Stamper, who retired in 2000 after his own controversy with the department's handling of the WTO demonstration.
"They look for legal leverage to get a drug dealer off the streets. They find if you push people far enough, they'll take a swing, or pull back, or resist, and the police officer will make the obstruction arrest."
He said the most disturbing aspect of the obstruction arrest is its unequal application based on race, and its connection to cases involving force.
Stamper said obstruction arrests in Seattle should be thoroughly investigated, and the department should track them to spot problem officers. He said police unions fight that idea "tooth and nail."
Seattle Police Guild President Rich O'Neill did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Sandidge wants justice
Sandidge beat the two charges against him -- assault and resisting arrest -- at a criminal trial. The obstructing charge was dropped after the jury could not reach agreement.
Free of criminal liability, Sandidge wanted justice. He turned to Carr, the city attorney, in his quest to prosecute the officers.
Carr said he declined the request because the trial judge, George Holifield, had ruled during pretrial motions that the officers had probable cause to arrest Sandidge.
Sandidge then asked Municipal Court Judge Ron Mamiya to let him prosecute officers Blackmer and Ortiz for assault under a "civil complaint process" laid out in court rules.
Civil rights lawyer Chris Carney, a former public defender, helped Sandidge write the brief and would have helped with the prosecution, he said.
But Mamiya rejected the request, in part because the City Attorney's Office and his court would have had a conflict of interest.
Carney said he respects the judge, but that by Maymiya's reasoning police officers could never be prosecuted in any court, although that's not the case. Several police officers have been prosecuted in Municipal Court.
"Sandidge really, truly believed he was treated unfairly and someone had to say something about it," Carney said.
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