Seattle Crime Reports : Seattle Crime Blog : Seattle, Washington

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A recent "Party Patrol" operation executed by the King County Sheriff's office picked up some truly bright individuals for some truly stupid violations of the law.

While the Party Patrol's are explicitly launched to arrest and cite underage offenders, this weekend's operation managed to nab some of those supposedly smart enough to fully understand the law.

"One parent who was called to pick up her son was nearly arrested after she arrived and tried to get deputies out of the home, declaring, "her husband was an attorney," the Sheriff's Office reported." - Seattle P-I

Nice, lady.  Your husband is an attorney, so your child and his friends have the right to break the law?  Tell me if I am missing something here.

But that woman seemed positively bright compared to another group of partygoers that managed to achieve a spot in the "people who should not reproduce" pantheon.

"In one case, two adults, ages 33 and 43, were arrested on felony drug charges after deputies caught them holding a party for teens in the 4700 block of Ames Lake-Carnation Road in northeast King County. Police found ecstasy in the home and sent in an undercover detective who bought marijuana from an unsuspecting 18-year-old, the Sheriff's Office reported."

Those adults should be punished severely.  When will some parents realize it is not their job to be cool, it is their job to set examples.  Hosting a party where ecstasy is present?  I'm going to go with bad example on that one.

But while those parents made a truly poor decision, what that teen that sold the officer marijuana did was almost impossibly stupid.

"The teen brought the marijuana from his car and sold it to the detective despite seeing several uniformed officers already outside the home, Urquhart said."

Nice.  I'm guessing there's a bright future for that young one. 

The Party Patrol was meant for dumb teens.  Looks like dumb adults take the cake on this one. 

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On March 25, a 50,000-gallon tank holding toxic water as caustic as lye exploded in South Seattle.

Seems like a pretty big event, right?  Only you haven't heard of it until now because no one bothered to tell the public.  And it's not because the problem was under control:

It looked like a tornado hit the thing. It didn't just collapse -- it blew up the back of the building," said Peggy Rice, a King County industrial waste inspector. "It looked like a natural disaster had hit.

It wasn't a natural disaster that cause the spill, but the contents of what came out of the exploded tank threaten to create another kind of disaster:

Most of the waste was caught behind berms around the facility. But thousands of gallons are thought to have escaped to the bay or gone down the sewer to the county's wastewater treatment plant, said the company's owner, Marc Wislen.

Thousands of gallons of water as caustic as lye is no small problem. But the biggest problem associated with this situation is how all parties involved handled the situation. The owner of the company that operated the tanks did not contact authorities until the following day, failed to report the possibility of any of the toxic material reaching sewage pipes, and had been illegally storing different chemicals in the tank.

"What was in the demolished tank?

Good question.

It was highly caustic. King County inspectors' testing showed it also contained cadmium, which is toxic; as well as copper, which is toxic to salmon; and nickel, another byproduct of the metal plating business.

The Department of Ecology was not even notified of the explosion until three days later, so it released no official statement, despite the fact that the spill was one of the biggest in state history and the largest this decade.

Peggy Rice of the King County Industrial Waster Inspectors office will be handing out citations for the laws that were broken.

My only question is, who's handing out citations to the King County government, who handled this situation so egregiously?  The excuse of "we didn't know" doesn't work on this one.  Let's hope no further damage is caused by this spill.

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Well, the City of Seattle is back at it.

Already one of the most incompetent bureaucratic institutions since Tammany Hall, the city recently lost a court case that may require it to reimburse up to $500,000 to local citizens who were issued parking tickets on holidays.

The city has offered no excuse...and what could they really say? I'm shocked that they even tried to fight this in court. It seems pretty cut and dry. It's a holiday...people don't need to pay for parking on holidays...don't issue parking tickets for not paying on holidays. Simple enough.

It's pretty clear to me that this was an attempt by the city to bulk up the budget.  How they thought they would get away with it is beyond me.  This wasn't a couple of people, this was thousands of people.

If you received a parking ticket on the following dates, you may qualify for a refund.

• Nov. 28, 2003
  
• July 5, 2004
  
• Nov. 26, 2004
  
• Dec. 24, 2004
  
• Dec. 31, 2004
  
• Nov. 25, 2005
  
• Dec. 26, 2005
  
• Jan. 2, 2006

If you receive a refund, send a shout out to Colette Turner. She's the woman who first brought about the lawsuit after getting a parking ticket on New Year's Eve. Kudos Colette.

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Back on Veteran's Day, notorious FOX News commentator Bill O'Reilly offered his take on the "suspicious" ferry passengers we covered earlier this morning. Here's the clip (discussion of the P.I. comes in at around 50 seconds):



Before proceeding, let's be clear on a few points:

• We at Seattle Crime Blog have a collective loathing for Mr. O'Reilly and his supposed "no spin zone";
  
• the tactics of ordering cameras upon Roger Oglesby after he had already declined to comment is an extremely sleazy thing to do;
  
• Jesse Waters' questions are certainly not "fair" or "balanced"; and
  
• bringing in D. Parvaz's totally unrelated statement that "church is a repressive institution" when it has nothing to do with the matter at hand just makes you look like a bunch of ideology-driven assholes...which, of course, you very well may be.

First of all, the men were photographed by the ferry captain, not a fellow passenger. And it wasn't because they "looked Middle Eastern," as the author is so quick to suggest. It was because of what the Times calls "unusual behavior — namely that they were taking pictures below deck, in areas that don't hold much interest for most tourists."

But at this point the author is too far into his epiphany for it to matter...after all, we're just reaching the thesis:

Should a newspaper — in a free country, proud of its history as a melting pot — be stereotyping people as "suspicious" by the pigment of their skin?

Joel is missing the point completely. The newspaper isn't stereotyping at all; they're reporting (or, more accurately in this case, failing to report) on relevant local news, news that people in the community are talking about and that impacts them directly. Ultimately, such reporting should be the central focus of a respected daily paper...no matter what the political leanings of their editorial board.

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Over at the P.I., they're already gloating about this:

The FBI has called off a global manhunt for two men who looked Middle Eastern and were spotted snapping pictures and demonstrating "suspicious behavior" on a Washington ferry last summer.

[...]

Photos of the pair, taken by Washington State Ferries employees, were released to the news media in August in an effort to identify and locate them, after an investigation found that they "showed an inordinate interest in the operation of the shipboard systems," the FBI said at the time.

Turns out the duo was really just a pair of businessmen from the EU, who visited Seattle last July and wanted to take photos of the boat's interior (since their home country supposedly doesn't have car ferries). So much for an "inordinate interest."

As you'll recall, the P.I. - unlike the Times - refused to run the photo of the men, due to "civil liberties and privacy concerns, which editors felt outweighed the newsworthiness of the images." We're all for those same concerns here at Seattle Crime Blog. Problem is, this isn't a civil liberties issue.

These men were photographed in a public place. There were no names associated with their faces, nor even any information as to what country they hailed from. It's no secret that the Puget Sound's ferry system is a shockingly vulnerable terrorist target, and - rightly or wrongly - two Middle Eastern men taking photos in an obscure location of the boat is going to raise questions. Such is the world we live in.

And in their haste to earn praise as a good liberal paper, editors at the P.I. got ahead of themselves: if you'll recall, the FBI wasn't saying that they knew the men were terrorists. They never claimed that if found, the pair would be locked away at Guantanamo and waterboarded 'til the cows come home. They just wanted to talk with them...and if what happened when the pair came forth two weeks ago is any indication, it would have been determined that the men's actions were innocent enough to warrant them walking free.

Sure, the P.I. was right this time. But it would be foolish to underplay the threat of Islamic extremism in the name of political correctness. And, like a certain neighborhood blog we recently called out for not doing their job, the P.I. failed to serve the public's interest by not publishing the photos in question. More concerned about the feelings of two foreigners than the safety of the community, the paper's editors allowed their political biases to impede on good editorial judgment.

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Yesterday, I wrote about how Washington State still had the option for death row inmates to choose death by hanging instead of lethal injection. I would have probably left it that. But a reader comment drove me to do some more research:

I believe there was one case where a guy chose hanging and then ate himself into obesity so they couldn't hang him. Now don't quote me on that but I think that's how it went down. Quite a few years ago.

Turns out, until 1994, hanging was the only way that death row inmates met their demise in Washington State. 

The last hanging death occurred that year...as did a more humorous case worth noting: Mitchell Rupe, a violent and grotesque rapist and murderer who died in 2006, apparently ate himself to such a weight that a federal judge ruled hanging him would have constituted cruel and unusual punishment (because his sheer body weight would have forced his head to pop off in the process).

I guess that's one way to get a stay of execution.

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Seattlest had the scoop on a story yesterday that was just too good to pass up:

Two Federal Way women have filed a report with local police, claiming they have been sexually assaulted by ghosts in their apartment. [...] According to the police report, the women claim a "paranormal person" has been placing sensors on their bodies and raping them. One of the women reports the assaults have been happening for over two years.

I'd make the obligatory Ghost reference...but it seems inappropriate, given Sir Patrick Swayze's current health woes. And to defame the man behind Road House - especially when he's suffering from cancer - seems like a surefire ticket to an eternity in hell.

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Walking to work on Tuesday morning, I came across a row of "No Parking" signs near the corner of 17th & Denny that appeared to have popped up overnight. Nothing too suspicious...except that somebody in the neighborhood is disputing their legitimacy. Affixed with tape to each sign was the following note:

For those who can't read the message, it says:

According to SPD Parking Enforcement, these mysterious "no parking" signs are not on file as required in order to be enforceable. Park away, neighbors.

This was discovered by speaking with Supervisor Miller, at 3:10 p.m. Monday 4/14 (684-5086).

S.D.O.T. Street Use Division was notified and will investigate the unauthorized signs within 48 hours.

Such signs are simply rented from National Barricade. SPD must be notified 24hrs prior to the signs taking effect, but SPD was not notified at all. The signs are required to display contact information for the party who deployed them but clearly these do not, so we cannot find out who put them here or why. I did not ask about those farther south, but these on the 100 block of 17th Ave E and 1800 block of 17th Ave are definitely not authorized.

The note, signed local resident Phil Mocek, implied that SDOT would be "investigating" in the next 48 hours. Maybe they did, or maybe they didn't. But somebody took action.

On the way to work this morning, the "No Parking" signs were still blocking off a good portion of the curbside real estate. Yet Phil's dictum on parking liberation, a copy of which had been attached to each sign, wasn't so lucky:

Yup. That's a stack of Phil's notes, crumpled and thrown in the dirt. Now, one can't help but wonder: are the signs legitimate, and Supervisor Miller's statement contrary just the result of a communication lapse within city government? Or is someone on Capitol Hill stealing parking spots and hastily destroying any evidence exposing their trickery?

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It can't help but make an American proud to hear that our country's borders are being guarded by fine, upstanding young men like Desmond Bastian:

Bastian, 31, a U.S. citizen who lived in Surrey, B.C., and worked as a U.S. customs and immigration inspector, allowed [a British Columbia prostitute] to drive through the Blaine crossing while carrying large loads of marijuana and other drugs.

According to the woman's testimony at Bastian's trial, she would lift her skirt and bare her breast while being waved through the border station, and then would often meet Bastian afterward for sex.

Now, Bastian has been sentenced to 32 months in prison, where we're guessing his sexual experiences are going to be a might bit different than what this international playboy got used to at his old job.

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Either I'm in a laughing mood, or local crime news has been particularly hilarious lately.

There's a piece in today's Times about the latest weapon to assist Seattle meter maids in their valiant quest to enforce parking laws: Segway scooters.

I always thought SPD's contempt for parking cops could not be more apparent than it already was: after all, having to ride the city streets in those euro-boxes they use now seems like the ultimate humiliation. "No, you don't get a gun, rookie...and what's more, you'll be making your rounds in one of these." 

I was wrong. Good work, Seattle: if you really wanted to find a way to make people respect parking enforcement even less, then the six Segways - which according to The Times cost $5,000 a pop - were a worthwhile use of our city's funds.

Luckily Seattle isn't the parking enforcement laughing stock of America...turns out the machine that even our country's president couldn't handle is popping in law enforcement circles everywhere. Segway says that their "personal transporters" are used by "more than 100 police agencies worldwide," from New York to Texas to Chicago (as pictured at right).

Locally, cops seem to like the battery-powered scooters:

"I love it. You can get around town nicely," [Officer Minh] Doan said. "You don't have to fight traffic, you don't have to find parking, and it saves a lot of gas. You cover a lot more ground than you do on foot."

Or maybe Doan is just making the most out of his embarrassing situation.

Perhaps the best part out of all of this is the fact that the Segways have flashing red and blue lights on them.  I mean, seriously. You know those police videos where a cop tries to ram a car and ends up spinning out himself? Just picture that...but replace the fleeing vehicle with a running bum and the cop car with a Segway. Comedy gold.

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Samir J. Judeh. Name sound familiar?

Probably not (unless you're one of the folks who subscribed to our new link feed...), but this guy seems to have a knack for evading police during high speed pursuit.

Yesterday morning, Judeh apparently managed to escape from a motel room while officers were outside "plotting their next move," then lost them driving southbound in the northbound lanes of I-5, before car-jacking a woman and making her drive him to the U-District.

Why were the police looking for him in the first place? Well, turns out it stemmed from an earlier driving infraction: he had avoided officers in not one, but two high-speed chases earlier this month. The best part - besides this man being the most hilariously elusive criminal in recent memory - is why he is running in the first place. He apparently has no outstanding arrest warrants to begin with, and the only reason he ran from the cops earlier this month was because they tried to stop him for "minor traffic offenses." Good call, buddy.

Even the cops seem perplexed by his actions:

"He has no reason to cause all these problems for himself," [Mountlake Terrace police sgt. Doug Hansen] said.

We don't know why, but somehow one minor traffic offense has quickly turned into felony elusions, carjacking, and a whole lot of countywide notoriety.

Can you imagine this guy's conversation with his cell mate when he ultimate gets caught (which is all but guaranteed with a case as high profile as this)? We'd guess it would go something like this:

Judeh: "What you in for?"

Cellmate: "Murder, what about you?"

Judeh: "Failure to yield."

Cellmate: "Word."

Congratulations, Samir...you've just entered the inexplicable criminality hall of fame.

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As if being in jail wasn't bad enough, it turns out the illness that struck inmates at the Northwest Detention Center back in August was in fact food poisoning:

It could have been the dinner sausage or the turkey and potato lunch casserole, but the Pierce County Health Department says it definitely was food poisoning. [...] Documents released to the News Tribune said about 200 people were treated at the clinic for diarrhea, but others left rather than wait in line.

The above quote is from the Seattle Times, who also report that the Pierce County Health Department has suggested a "food safety course" for the kitchen staff.

I'm sure inmates have breathed a collective sigh of relief. Because after all, food safety must be every prisoner's #1 concern.

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Amanda Knox's celebrity status continues to grow.

Just type her name into YouTube. Where a few months ago there was nothing, now 34 videos on various issues from a range of countries pop up on your computer screen. Some are news clips related to the case, while others appear to have just thrown her name in as tag to lure viewers to otherwise non-related videos.

And then there's "Amanda Knox is burning," the bizarre clip below, which a commenting reader - 100tek of the Perugia City Blog - linked us to a few days ago.



As far as I can tell, the majority (if not all) of the quotes repeated in a robotic Italian voice have been directly attributed or otherwise connected to Knox in newspaper articles regarding the case. What a wonderful world we live in, where someone with even the most basic technology skills can translate all the complexities of an international murder mystery into a 4 minute video clip.

"Amanda Knox is burning," which can't have taken more than a couple hours to complete, has already had more than 20,000 views.

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It seems like everybody in Perugia has something to say about Amanda Knox and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito.

Today, two English newspapers are reporting on an extremely unimportant "development" in the case: that Knox and Sollecito supposedly went shopping for lingerie the day after the murder.

First off...who cares? It has already been reported by one of Kercher's close friends that Knox didn't appear particularly distraught after the killing. Some people would say this is cause for suspicion; others - myself included - don't find her lack of emotion to be particularly worthwhile one way or another.

People handle death differently. What some express through tears and visible distress, others internalize and deal with on their own. To try and make a determination of a person's guilt or innocence simply based on their external emotional response to a crime, no matter how heinous the circumstances surrounding it, is absurd.

Working from this perspective, it shouldn't be at all surprising if Knox went shopping for lingerie with her boyfriend so shortly after the incident occurred. For all we know, shopping - or sex - could be their way of handling the newfound stress.

So why am I writing about it? Well, though the news doesn't strike me as being largely important, one article in The Daily Mail features some hilarious quotes from the shop owner who claims he witnessed the suspects' so-called "strange" behavior.

Knox, 20, who calls herself Foxy Knoxy, and doctor's son Sollecito, 23, were overheard by a shopkeeper as they browsed through underwear in a clothes shop selling fashion items.

Carlo Maria Scotto di Rinaldi spoke to police two days after the couple were arrested on November 6, after recognising them on the television news. "They came into the shop and were there for about 20 minutes," he said. "The girl bought a camisole and G-string.

"I heard her as she was choosing the underwear - particularly the G-string - and as they were ready to pay, in front of the till, she whispered, 'Afterwards I'm going to take you home so we can have wild sex together'."

The report at The Times Online, meanwhile, gives a slightly different quote from the shopkeep. This one, equally lame, is attributed to Sollecito.

Mr di Rinaldi said that they stayed for half an hour, and that Ms Knox bought two thongs. He overheard Mr Sollecito say to Ms Knox: “You can put these on at home and we’ll have wild sex.” He said that they spoke in English, “but I know the language and had no difficulty in understanding”.

Let's assume for a minute that these quotes are legit. For someone who attempts - albeit lamely, as The Stranger's Christopher Frizzelle has pointed out - to exhibit creativity in her writing, Amanda Knox sure has no idea how to talk dirty.

"Afterwards I'm going to take you home so we can have wild sex together"?

I've never been good at sex talk myself...but even I could think of something better to say than that.

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Remember the Amanda Knox video that swept the Internet after her arrest, purported to show the young suspect drunk with some friends (a video that has since been removed from YouTube)?

Well, another YouTube video has been discovered, this one said to be of Rudy Hermann Guede, the man police have identified as their fourth suspect in the murder of Meredith Kercher. And this clip is even stranger than it's predecessor. Better watch while you can, because it seems quite likely to be taken offline in the coming days.



I don't really know what to say about this. But in a world dominated by what Monica Guzman at the P-I's Big Blog has aptly called "the court of public opinion," this can't be a good opening statement for Mr. Guede.

This video is just one of a few interesting developments in the Kercher case today. More updates to come this afternoon, when I get home from work and have time for more analysis.

Thanks to the Times Online for finding and publishing the link to the above video.

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The Telegraph reports today that Amanda Knox, the UW student studying in Italy suspected in the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher, expressed little concern after discovering her friend's corpse.

The comments were made by a friend of Kercher's, which means that it is best to take them with a grain of salt: after all, it seems reasonable that people from the Kercher camp would be looking to demonize Knox in attempts to secure a guilty verdict in the case.

Still, if accurate, the claims shed a sinister light on a suspect whose MySpace page portrays her as no different than the thousands of other 20-something college girls from the Emerald City.

Robyn Butterworth, one of the last people to see Miss Kercher alive, told police in Britain that Amanda Knox, 20, "seemed proud" of being the first person to see the body.

[...]

Miss Butterworth, who was on the same university exchange programme as Miss Kercher, said she had run into Knox on the day Miss Kercher's body was found.

In a statement to the Northern Constabulary in Scotland, she said: "I went into the police waiting room. It was around 10.30pm. In the waiting room was Amanda, Meredith's flatmate.

"She kept talking about how she had found Meredith and seemed proud of being the first to find her. She behaved as if she was not upset." [As usual, emphasis in the above selection was added by the Seattle Crime Blogger - Ed.]

These are very vague statements. "Seemed proud"? "Behaved as if she was not upset"? Sounds fishy.

What would the suspect have to do to prove to Ms. Butterworth that she was upset? Obviously Knox's reaction to the death of her flatmate wouldn't be as severe as the reaction of one of Kercher's close friends. Is Butterworth saying that since Knox wasn't emotionally distraught or tearful at the death of her roommate, that immediately counts as a strike against her?

Just an observation...

Meanwhile, The Telegraph's coverage yesterday - while the Seattle Crime Blogger was temporarily out of commission - includes some new developments worth noting:

• Meredith murder suspect "caught on CCTV" - A closed circuit TV camera purports to show Knox entering the home where Meredith Kercher died on the night of the crime (apparently contradicting previous statements the flip-flopping suspect already made).
• Hair found in Meredith's fist may identify killer - Ohh, forensics! From the article: "A few strands of hair found in Meredith Kercher's clenched and bloodied fist may hold the clue to the identity of her killer, it has emerged," it says. "Dr Luca Lalli, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Miss Kercher, said he had discovered 'some hairs, some skin cells and some other fibres' on her body." If the hair belongs to one of the three suspects currently locked in a Perugian jail, I'd imagine this would just about clinch the case. How could you talk your way out of this one?

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Interesting story in the P-I today about the so-called "murderabilia" industry, which recently gained some publicity in the local press after Republican congressman and former King County sheriff Dave Reichert criticized its existence.

Reichert claims that websites like Murder Auction (where, according to the P-I, Internet bidders can purchase an "array of items - such as toenail clippings and bodily fluids - connected with convicted mass murderers") are exploitative, adding pain to the lives of victims who've already suffered enough.

If you visit Murder Auction's website, the "About" page explains their reasoning for promoting murderabilia. In response to questions about his/her motives, the site operator had this to say:

...I choose to believe no matter how ghastly a thing someone might have done there is still happiness they can give. By collecting letters, artwork, and crafts we get a look into the mind of these people. Are we going to come up with a cure for what makes people be serial killers I doubt it, could we learn ways to be more precautious, yes that’s very possible.

...

We do NOT glorify anyone. We simply present the facts as they are and offer a rare opportunity to own various pieces of criminal history.

Owning a piece of criminal history doesn't come cheap. Often, the cost of murderabilia items is inflated simply due to their unsavory past. For example, the vehicle belonging to convicted serial murderer Gary Ridgway (better known as the Green River Killer) - despite being nearly 20 years old - was available at Murder Auction with an asking price of $5,000. As of last night, according to the article, nobody has placed a bid.

For killers and those who deal in their mementos, the industry can mean big money, said Andy Kahan, a longtime murderabilia opponent.

"It's a very despicable industry," said Kahan, director of crime victim support for the city of Houston. "For the families that I deal with, it's like being gutted all over again."

Kahan said the proceeds of about half the items sold online go straight to the killers. The rest are paid to secondhand owners.

The notoriety some killers enjoy boost prices for their artwork, writings and former possessions, Kahan said. The owner of Ridgway's wheels, for instance, is asking for nearly 10 times the car's listed Kelley Blue Book value.

Reichert's offense was shared by Democratic representative Brad Ellsworth of Indiana, and the two recently introduced a bill called the Stop the Sale of Murderabilia to Protect the Dignity of Crime Victims Act of 2007 aimed at curbing "murderabilia" sales. If passed, the bill would "make it a felony for inmates to mail items for the purpose of interstate commerce."