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?"