I went down to City Hall and filed a complaint against the Olympia Police Department for their inciting the crowd to riot on Valentine's Day at Evergreen State College.

A new video posted by the Geoduck Student Union shows the Olympia Police ignoring both chain of command and rules of engagement policies. These policies are there to prevent riots from forming out of peaceful demonstrations. Their negligence and stupid bravado caused the event to escalate needlessly putting officers and students in danger.

I stated that the Thurston County officers at the car who never felt threatened enough to use crowd control actions were engaged in the process of a peaceful resolution. The Evergreen policewoman had announced to the crowd that she would let him go, after being advised that that would be the best solution, and was in the process of getting his name and contact information.

The police on the scene first, and therefore in command of the situation, gave no indication that they approved or condoned the other officers coming in and using force. The police on the outside of the circle did not have a strategically limited position like the cops inside the circle making their use of force seem unwarranted and dangerous to the officers surrounded.

The Evergreen policewoman gave no indication that she knew they were coming or that they would be using force. During the forum on Tuesday she stated that she stood up to receive pepper spray in her face. Every indication in the video shown gives the impression that after an hour of the same level of commitment to a peaceful resolution shown by both police and students that letting the man go would have served as a symbolic gesture that would have dispersed the crowd peacefully.

The video clearly shows that the students did not induce, or want to face, violence from the police. They demonstrate this by holding peace signs towards the officers who acted violently, an obvious try by some to calm things down. You can also see the immediate emotional mood swing from the determination to peacefully see the man released to outrage and reaction against police violence.

I asked for the formation of a citizen police review board, to replace the city auditor, which would have power to ask for disciplinary action. I asked that the officers involved are held responsible and that the crowd control policies are reviewed.

Currently complaints of police misconduct are investigated internally by a police officer. The city auditor, who began reviewing cases in 2003, does not investigate the complaints only reviews the outcome of the complaints. Therefore it is not surprising that in four years 29 complaints of excessive force were reported and not one of them was sustained. In fact of the 140 total complaints against the police in the past four years only 15 were sustained, and of the 74 major complaints, which include coercion, untruthfulness, profiling, illegal searches, etc., only 5 were sustained. The worst of those five was one case of discrimination toward a woman with a service dog, three misuse of, or failure to maintain, city property and one for unapproved off duty employment.

The Olympia police have a record of major complaints against them, with zero culpability. It is laughable to think that these auditor reports are in any way accurate because they are based off police investigator reports of their own conduct. In a substantial way the current auditor position is used to make sure that the outcomes of internal investigations are written squeaky clean.

A citizen review board investigating, instead of just auditing, all major complaints against the police would remove this bias. By proving to be a true avenue for justice on complaints against the police it would encourage people who are afraid of complaining to come forward and state their cases. This would reward cops for acting lawfully and punish those who act unlawfully, cleaning up our police force and repairing its image with the public.