The white Seattle officer who arrested an African-American man she claimed swung a golf club at her was fired Tuesday for her racial bias and combative approach, the city's police chief said.
Officer Cynthia Whitlatch drew an outcry when the video of the July 2014 arrest showed William Wingate, 69, doing nothing besides leaning on the club like a cane.
The Seattle Police Department released the video in January and worked with the City Attorney's Office to dismiss all charges against Wingate.
The released dashcam video showed Officer Cynthia Whitlatch arrest retired bus driver William Wingate in downtown Seattle in July. Whitlatch, who is white, claimed Wingate, who is black, swung his club at her.
The footage of the incident showed no such maneuver.
Seattle Police Chief Kathleen OToole ordered a conduct review into Whitlatch after the July 9 arrest, where Wingate was charged with obstruction and unlawful use of a weapon.
Officers found racially insensitive posts on the cops Facebook page. She called riots in Ferguson over the shooting death of a black unarmed teen chronic black racism, police said.
I am tired of black peoples (sic) paranoia that white people are out to get them, she wrote. When one of her friends criticized her comments, she called him another black racist, police said.
At some point policy makers are going to have to ask themselves if the state can continue to afford paying out all this shit for crap behavior. I would rather bad cops be held accountable than see the state simply pay out multimillion dollar settlements. How does that teach the bad cop anything?
Shouldn't the officer also be charged with filing a false report/affidavit?
You are thinking of this the wrong way. If a company kept having its workers do bad things, you would say that management is partly responsible. Well, when it comes to cops, guess who the management/owners are... its the civilians.
The termination notice is suitably harsh: http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Doc.pdf
Check out the rest of the scenery. He didn't fit inJeez the officer sounds like a real winner. What makes a person want to confront an innocent and go through the work/paperwork to basically throw that person in jail?
You are thinking of this the wrong way. If a company kept having its workers do bad things, you would say that management is partly responsible. Well, when it comes to cops, guess who the management/owners are... its the civilians.
“I am tired of black peoples (sic) paranoia that white people are out to get them,” she wrote
Thread title: "Seattle officer who arrested black man carrying golf club as a cane fired"http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...an-carrying-golf-club-fired-article-1.2362131
Good that they were able to come to a correct conclusion based on the video tape for once.
Jeez the officer sounds like a real winner. What makes a person want to confront an innocent and go through the work/paperwork to basically throw that person in jail?
That video is bizarre. I can only conclude that he may have done something she (probably mistakenly) construed as swinging the club, outside the view of the camera - otherwise her actions simply make no sense - but in any case she handled this horribly. She seems like a hair-trigger bully with no ability to distinguish between a real threat and a harmless older gentleman. She deserved to be fired.