“You’re going to jail for robbery, that’s all… .Yeah, I’m gonna make stuff up,” gloated a Seattle Police officer in a dashcam video of what proved to be an unjustified arrest.

The Seattle PD, which has been involved in a string of high-profile abuses, is currently being investigated by the federal Justice Department. Last fall the Seattle ABC affiliate filed a lawsuit against the Seattle PD in King County Superior Court, insisting that the department had “intentionally and illegally stonewalled” efforts to obtain dashcam videos of controversial police actions:

Whether it’s a DUI suspect failing a field sobriety test or a police officer under the microscope following an officer-involved shooting, most video evidence comes directly from the police department itself. Often the video is from cameras mounted on the dashboards of patrol  cars.

After each shift the officer transfers their video into the department’s system and a database keeps track of the recordings. The Problem Solvers have been fighting with the Seattle Police Department for more than a year to gain access to that database so we’d have an index to request specific videos. At every turn the Seattle Police Department has blocked us.

The City of Seattle is also using exceptionally cynical methods to obstruct defense attorney James Egan from obtaining dashcam videos. Egan  has represented several victims of police abuse and has publicized videos of those incidents. After he filed a request under the Washington Public Records Law for another batch of dashcam videos, Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes filed a suit against Egan, making the preposterous claim that the request was a violation of the Privacy Act.

“Should Holmes prevail, it would take at least three years to obtain the vids – just when the statute of limitations for lawsuits against SPD runs out and when the department routinely erases stored videos,” reports the Seattle Weekly.

“The idea that you can’t get a video until three years later is self protectionism,” Egan points out. “They don’t want the public to know the skeletons in their closet.”

In its 67-page report, the Justice Department described the Seattle PD as a “broken” agency that routinely commits crimes against the constitutionally protected rights of the public it supposedly protects:

We find that SPD engages in a pattern or practice of using unnecessary or excessive force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Section 14141. Deficiencies in SPD’s training, policies, and oversight with regard to the use of force contribute to the constitutional violations. Officers lack adequate training or policies on when and how to report force and when and how to use many impact weapons (such as batons and flashlights). We also find that, starting from the top, SPD supervisors often fail to meet their responsibility to provide oversight of the use of force by individual officers. Command staff does not always provide supervisors with clear direction or expectations of how to supervise the use of force.

The inquiry determined that “When SPD officers use force, they do so in an unconstitutional manner nearly 20% of the time”; that “SPD officers too quickly resort to the use of impact weapons, such as batons and flashlights”; and that “SPD officers escalate situations and use unnecessary or excessive force when arresting individuals for minor offenses.”

Go here to see the video of an SPD officer casually admitting that he fabricates evidence, and here to read more about KOMO’s investigation of systemic abuse by the SPD.