"Are you going to murder me, too?"
A Seattle patrol officer, who works downtown, says he hears comments like this on an almost daily basis when he's out working the streets.
"People we stop at some point say, 'Don't shoot me, man!' " the officer told me. "I try to have thick skin and not let it get to me."
But it is getting to them. As it clearly has gotten to us.
A steady drip-drip of videos highlighting strong-arm police tactics, coupled with that pointless killing of an Indian woodcarver, have left cop and citizen alike angry or, at the least, eyeing one another suspiciously.
Where do we go from here?
That's what I wondered when I read yet another defensive account of all this in the latest issue of the Seattle Police Officers' Guild newspaper, The Guardian. The union president, Sgt. Rich O'Neill, writes that the problem is an "anti-police feeding frenzy." For which he blames the usual suspects: the media, liberal intolerance, the ACLU, etc.
But what raised my eyebrows — and others around town — was the advice he gave to officers:
"You are paid to use your discretion and there are many ways to do police work. Recent events should show us that many in the city really don't want aggressive officers who generate on-view incidents. They want officers who avoid controversy and simply respond when summoned by 911."
Uh-oh. He's saying, in other words: "Lay low."
An "on-view" is police jargon for officers taking action on their own initiative. Say you're a cop on patrol and you see a guy with bolt cutters next to a bike rack. Getting out and questioning him is an on-view.
In fact Officer Ian Birk was conducting a type of on-view — a stop of a person believed to be behaving suspiciously — when he shot and killed John T. Williams last August.
What the union head is suggesting here is that the scrutiny of police is so severe right now, and so lopsided, that cops should mostly just respond, not initiate.
"If there's borderline criminal or suspicious activity, I say let it go," O'Neill said when I asked him to elaborate. "Don't go out on a limb. It's not worth it, because if it goes sideways, you're going to be the latest poster child on the news."
O'Neill said he didn't use the term "de-policing" because that suggests cops "sitting under a tree reading a book." What he's counseling, until the heated climate cools, is that police take a passive approach to suspicious activity and minor crimes but continue to respond to serious crimes.
"If somebody's getting beaten up in an alley, obviously you're going to go after that," he said.
A Seattle police spokesman, Sean Whitcomb, says the chief and other top brass are aware this sentiment is in the ranks.
"When you feel some of the public animosity and distrust that's out there, there's a temptation to say, 'Let's just show up and do the bare minimum,' " Whitcomb said.
But, he added: "Most officers are not interested in that. For one thing, they've taken an oath that says the opposite."
I spoke or e-mailed with three Seattle police officers, to see what they think of all this. All talked only if I didn't identify them, due to a policy that line officers can't speak to the media without getting approval. Plus the mood is intense these days, what with the feds investigating the department.
The officers said the idea of de-policing has come up.
Said one: "It's on your mind that you might end up the star of the next video. So now you think two or three times about stopping someone, when before you would have gone more with your instincts."
This has come up before in Seattle, mostly after the 2001 shooting of a black man, Aaron Roberts, by police in the Central Area. Then some cops openly said it wasn't worth fighting crime aggressively in minority neighborhoods because the cop might end up being labeled a racist or under some sort of civil-rights review.
Back then, one officer described how he'd let a black car thief get away because he was hesitant to arrest him, saying: "I don't want to see my name in the papers."
Today, a patrol officer said he wasn't planning to go along with anything like that.
"If something doesn't look right, I'm going to investigate it. That's what we're supposed to do."
Another cop cautioned that, "You in the media shouldn't take as gospel everything you read in The Guardian. We don't."
I asked O'Neill for examples of how police might look the other way. He said maybe they wouldn't do drug buy-bust operations anymore. Or no more "shakes" — the police term for contacting people who are behaving suspiciously.
"Don't turn over any rocks," he said. "We'll get them another day."
Won't crime go up?
"That might be a consequence," O'Neill said. "But the leaders of this city need to decide how they want it around here."
Like I said: Uh-oh.
All of this seems like a very human reaction to criticism. The cops feel under siege. Obviously some citizens do, too.
But somehow I doubt the people want this tumult to result in the Seattle police adopting "We'll Get Them Another Day" as its new crime-fighting motto.
