Sunday, February 21, 2010

Dawson v the City of Seattle

It's been five years since this judgement, but it's still the main reason we built the ACL. I was highly motivated to challenge the international police actions authorized under sustainable development plans in Seattle. I spent thousands of hours between Sept 30, 1999 and June 2002 preparing for this lawsuit. I was sure our win would become a barrier to nationwide expansion of this new search warrant policy and I refused to give up and let it fade into nothing. All those hours, all the money I spent on copy machines, all the binders I filled with highlighted letters and responses and printouts of federal and supra national government plans, were a waste, and it backfired. Instead of helping to stop the policy, I helped establish it.

Why Dawson lost:
http://openjurist.org/435/f3d/1054/dawson-v-city-of-seattle-l-ii-iv

I. Monell Entitles the City of Seattle to Summary Judgment

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Despite serious concerns about the conduct of the police, this case cannot survive summary judgment. Plaintiffs did not name in their cause of action the individual police officers who searched their rooms and violated their rights. Rather, Plaintiffs pleaded a case of municipal liability, claiming that the City of Seattle and its police chief were liable for their policies concerning detentions incident to search warrants and for their failure to properly train police officers to conduct those detentions. And so, Plaintiffs' claims are controlled by Monell, 436 U.S. at 691-692, 98 S.Ct. 2018. To survive summary judgment, there must be a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether there was a(1) policy or practice that (2) caused (3) a violation of plaintiffs' rights. Id. at 692, 98 S.Ct. 2018.

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Although, Plaintiffs have demonstrated at least a dispute of fact as to whether there were violations of plaintiffs' rights during the execution of the search warrant, they have failed to show that a policy of the City of Seattle or Seattle Police Department caused these violations. Roman Welyczko, an attorney with DPH, testified in his deposition that while DPH does not have a formal, written policy that police accompany inspectors on every inspection warrant, "the expectation of the department and what I have consistently communicated to staff is to have police accompaniment for reasons of safety and security." ER 204. In his deposition, Seattle Police Captain Kessler indicated that "generally, yes, we would detain people when we're in the middle of a search warrant of any kind. That's a basic officer's safety premise." ER 252. There is evidence, therefore, that both DPH and SPD have policies or customs concerning police accompaniment of DPH inspectors and detention incident to a search warrant for safety reasons.

When Attorney Margaret Boyle stripped the case of all my hard won FOIA evidence for the COPS' training programs in Seattle, she effectively eliminated all references to The Roosevelt Neighborhood Plan's "innovative strategies of enforcement" as published in the 1999 Matrix.

Boyle refused to name the well recorded ties between Sustainable Seattle, the DCLU and DON to UN Local Agenda 21 and the international blueprints for these new police actions. I provided reams of evidence that a policy adopted by the City of Seattle caused these actions. Boyle took it all out. She told me I had been named as a witness in April 2004 and that was why after years of almost entirely volunteer efforts I had to leave the team. I was never called as a witness and I was never contacted regarding the coming court appearance. In fact I never heard from her again, and I was the one who brought her the case and worked on it day and night for years. I got all the clients to sign on and I ended up housing most of them too just to keep them in Seattle for the 2 years it took Boye to file.

That the new police actions were part of a new communitarian police force called Community Oriented Policing Services in Washington DC was never admitted as evidence either. Amitai Etzioni's views on privacy and community policing appeared to be irrevelant to the case, even though Dawson guard Officer Hope Bauer of the Seattle Police Department was a federal COP.

Nothing has yet stopped the global movement toward rebuilding sustainable communities, and today sustainable is the buzzword for every business in the market. The fact that "sacrifices must be made" in the name of creating livable spaces is not a concern to the rich and the middle class who believe their good jobs, money, credit and nice homes protect them from the community police. hahahhahahah. When Americans began disrepecting the poor and the lower classes they fell for the biggest lie of all time. Either everyone in the USA has the natural born right to live free from police interference or nobody will have any rights for much longer. As more and more formerly middle class people end up on the bottom rung, they will have ample time to reflect on the way they treated people in their same situation last year. I know that if our yuppie neighbors would have supported the Dawson claims the outcome could have been vastly different. But the most often heard response: "Why do you care so much Niki?"

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yuppies! Arghhhhhhhh! I have spent the last six years living among the most nauseatingly smug group of people anywhere. Just like you describe. I like to imagine them trying to survive in Alaska in a tent, doing their own work. They hire everything done for themselves including having their dog's crap picked up out of their lawns. They love Big Brother and they brag about being Green and Sustainable.

Brow Furrowed said...

Agreed. I also lived in a middle-class enclave and was surrounded by them at work and very few seemed to have the slightest hint of a bullshit detector. That makes them very 'useful idiots' in the eyes of the string pullers. And it's this lack of a sense of something being not quite right, in conjuction with their egoic love of acronyms, the lexicon of communitarianism and other pretentious political esoterica, that is making it oh so easy for the NWO to establish it's network of willing workers for the cause. I'm thankful for my working class roots for giving me the nose to sniff out what is rotten and could be detrimental to my wellbeing. Unfortunately it's not a faculty that can be taught.

Niki Raapana said...

Thank you guys, this is one of those posts where I later thought it was a bit much and considered modifying my comment, particularly the hahahahahaha part.

But it's not just me making this sad observation about snobbery and its role in our nation's demise, and that's very reassuring. After last December's argument here over my helping homeless people with my gertee design, and my being told I am middle class and that I should stop caring about the poor because they're not worth it, I was in total shock. No matter what I said to explain my lower class working values and lifestyle made any difference to my middle class attackers. They determined I was middle class, just like them, and the only problem they said I have is that I don't believe the Bible. They said my home is lovely and disregarded the factual reality of my daily life. I was expected to make their belief of my life my truth, in spite of the way I have been snubbed and laughed at for the past ten years by all the middle class people I know who value money and posessions above all else. Most yuppies assumed the Dawson clients did something "bad" to deserve such treatment, I was told many times there was "more" to the story than we were told. I always responded "YES! you're so right," but that's as far as I got. To them the something "more" always meant the Dawson clients were criminals, had a meth lab or murdered somebody, NOT that the neo COPS were testing ways to violate Americans 4th and 5th amendments.

The original nine Dawson clients were all very different people from very different backgrounds. Boyle wated them to be upstanding types that could withstand past scrutiny, and one guy, Leo, was not allowed on the claim because of his servere drinking problem.

Our rights as citizens cease to exist if we can be designated inferiors. The test was successful because yuppie Americans were convinced rental tenants in shared housing are nothing more than "transients with a signifigant negative impact on the neighborhood."

It was really hard to see some of my friends take posession of houses formerly owned by "bad people who didn't deserve to keep them." Abated under new noise ordinances, land use and drug laws, many older homes were purchased for a song by upwardly mobile Americans who think getting rid of the poor people and poor neighborhoods sounds great. The reason Weed&Seed was so successful was the thousands of people who saw it as a way to steal homes.

The shortsighted way people jumped on grant funding and sweet "free" deals allowed for gross violations of our most sacredly held rights. It was disgusting to learn that people were aware of the new COPS' role in all these abatements, and as long as the money was flowing in none of these same good folks were willing to look at the facts behind the creation of COPS.

Why do American police have machine guns and humvees nowdays? Because we have sustainable communities now... we've evolved.

Anonymous said...

You just never know who your enemies might be. I have three siblings. We grew up poor but were never on the dole. Now it's two against two. One sibling and I hate Big Brother. The other two love Him. One sibling's adult child is getting every government hand-out she can get. I guess I should be glad someone in the clan is taking back a little of what's been stolen from us all these years but I'm not. So two of my siblings are voting to impoverish me every chance they get.

Anonymous said...
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Niki Raapana said...

I've known the difference between an officer's kid and an NCO's kid since I became a conscious person. The military makes a clear distinction between the ranks.

My dad raised me to believe the sewage treatment plant was the "officer's swimming pool." He told everyone he met, "Don't call me Sir I work for a living." He hated welfare and disrespected anyone who lived off it. It caused a lot of conflict in our family too, that and unions, which I think he hated worse than welfare.:)

When I asked him about my meetng with Professor Granados in 2002 and whether I shoud trust him, my dad told me he wouldn't trust anyone with a PhD.

I'm from the servant class. Most of my jobs have been waiting on people as a bartender, food server or pull tab dealer. I've never made more than 15k in one year, and that was a long time ago. I owe huge student loans and lost everything in my restaurant venture in 1994. I failed at my waiter's training school too, but if I had not pursued the ACL in 1999, who knows where I'd be or what I'd have accomplished instead.

I spent years helping Hugh sisley defend his property from the new ordinances, when I owned no home of my own. He liked it that I did it because of my "principles" and refused to compensate me for my work. He sued me for 18k in back rent in 2001 and the Dawson attorneys defended me. I lost and left owing him plus lawyer fees.

Margaret Boyle was furious with me for refusing to counter sue Hugh in civil court, she couldn't understand why I wouldn't turn on him and help the city get his land after what he did to me. I've done a lot of things in my life that I knew were wrong, but I couldn't help the communitarians, no matter how much contempt I have for Hugh.

I had to delete that last comment from Edith Garner because I just don't care what she has to say about my lack of middle class values or Biblical immorality. I'm not on the dole, I work hard just to survive every day, and I endure the contempt of the American middle class with my head held high. These covert COPS' wars started in the US HUD ghettos, the ethinic urban neighborhoods and the oldest university districts in the country. The comms perfected their tactics on people the middle class didn't want to brush elbows with, it was all yuppie bankers, investors, architects, contractors and enviromentalists who assisted with the RNP. It was rooms full of middle class REI consumers who called rental tenants like us "pigs" and "trash" in public meetings. But now I'm supposed to align myself ONLY with the middle class because they're more moral? Hilarious.

This is why the communitarians have won control over our nation. The most aware group is the Christians but they will never find commond ground with anyone but their own kind. So many of them believe the middle class is the only group that can save America, even though they sure haven't done anything to stop it so far.

What they do is help it! They insult the lower classes and lable them as undesireable neighbors, making the erroneous assumption that the communitarian plans end when all the streets are safer for shoppers. The comms have just got started.. and they're coming soon to a neighhborhood near all of us.

Either Americans can come together in this war for their freedom or it's all over but the sniveling.

Just because someone is poor does not mean they forfeit their God given rights; anyone who thinks rights are based on class status or Bible beliefs is a useful idiot.

boojahadeen said...

There is a certain Schadenfreude from "Balancing"

There are moments when I grieve for the middle Class. Then I hear a mantra from my militant youth leave my lips Where is Pol Pot when we need him? I quickly realize he is coming soon, and grieve once again. My occasional hatred of the Bourgeois only exposes my own classist indoctrination and makes me a useless angry idiot.

Jeffrey Sharp said...

My home was subject to the same kind of "home invasion". We sued in US District Court Case 12cv0031AA and it was dismissed BASED ON THE RULING IN DAWSON. But this is error and we are now in the 9th US Circuit.Our case is against the individual officers,not the City, specifically the pointing of load-ed guns and handcuffing of non-felon women and children, so Daw-son does not apply. Read the concurring opinion of Judge Flet-cherin Dawson. Also, in our case, the homeowner was cooperative and there were no threats of violence. The search was for "mail" addres-sed to a probationer who used the home as a mailing address.Check 9th US #13-35080 inJeffrey Sharp