April 27, 2006

By TIMOTHY HARRIS and CYDNEY GILLIS
Staff Reporters

Catherine Condeff awoke cold and alone in the cab of an abandoned mini-truck. The child’s Winnie the Pooh sleeping bag she’d found in a free pile failed to cover her too-thin 108-pound frame. She pulled her two coats tight against the wind, slammed the unlocked door shut, and began to walk.

Condeff — “Cat” to her friends — has been homeless off and on for more than a dozen years. Alcoholism, mental illness, abusive boyfriends, high rents, and limited work prospects have left this 49-going-on-60-year-old musician worse for the wear.

Today she’d visit her rep payee, get some of her SSI money, and buy a week of single-room luxury in a fleabag flop out on North Aurora. But first, she badly needed a beer. At 87 cents a pop, Steel Reserve 211 malt-liquor was the Mercer Mart special. She bought two, each in its own paper bag. With $12 in her pocket Cat was feeling flush. One can for now, then coffee at Larry’s, and the other for later.

A Walkman in her pocket blasted Jackson Browne. Cat says she knows him personally. When Jackson is angry, she says, his whole face goes dark, just like her boyfriend’s did last time he punched half her head black and blue.

The cold beer blunted the hard edge of morning. Sleep’s Dark and Silent Gate, from the 1976 Pretender album, wrapped Cat in a well-worn blanket of words. She and her friend Jackson sang a duet:

Sitting down by the highway

Looking down the road

Waiting for a ride

I don’t know where I’ve been

Wishing I could fly away

Don’t know where I’m going

Wishing I could hide

Oh God this is some shape I’m in

When the only thing that makes me cry

Is the kindness in my baby’s eye

“ It’s a mellow song,” she said later. “All of the houses were back away from the street. It’s not like I was disturbing anyone.”

But that’s not how everyone saw it.

“ At 0834 hours of 03/31/06, I saw the suspect standing inside the Metro bus shelter, located at S.W. corner of 3 W and W Mercer. The suspect wore a headset, drinking from a 16 oz can of ‘Steel Reserve Beer’ and screaming very loudly. I parked my patrol car, walked up to the suspect, and asked if she was OK. The suspect said, ‘Don’t bother me’ and continued shouting. I tried a couple of more times to get her attention but it did not work.”

Cat says she’d barely noticed a cruiser by the curb when Officer Choi grabbed the back of her jacket and threw her to the ground “like a bag of potatoes” without saying a word. It’s hard to know what happened, really. But it’s clear that Cat’s shitty life was about to get worse for no good reason.

“ I took the suspect’s beer and poured it out. The suspect removed her headset and said, ‘You owe me 75 cents.’ I advised her that drinking alcoholic beverage, in public was unlawful and asked for her identification. The suspect said ,‘It’s none of your fucking business’ and placed her right hand inside of her coat pocket, which appeared to be bulky. The suspect took a fighting stance and was aggressive. I believe that she may have a weapon in her pocket.”

Or a Walkman. This is where, by both accounts, things got unnecessarily ugly.

“ He threw me on the ground a couple of times, and I’m crying and screaming, saying ‘Why? Why are you doing this? Why?’” Then, Condeff says, she was thrown on the hood of the car, cuffed hard enough to leave her wrists bruised, cut, and swollen, and pushed into the car.

“ Due to the suspect’s non-compliance to my verbal commands and resistance to restraint and her aggressive behavior, I applied a hair hold as I was trained and escorted her to the ground then finished handcuffing her.”

“ All I remember him saying was ‘Where’s your ID?’” she recalls. “He just kept saying it, over and over.”

Both Condeff and Choi agree on what happened next. She was taken to jail, where she was held briefly without charge until EMTs arrived to transport Condeff to Harborview Medical Center. There, she was treated for a fractured hip and released to the street on crutches.

While the charge on the police incident report was listed as “obstructing,” Condeff was never formally cited or booked. No rights were read. No charges were filed. She just got beat up.

“ I’ll never forget his face,” says Condeff. “His smirky little face. He was getting a big kick out of it. Enjoying himself.”

Attorney Paul Richmond, who is active on police accountability issues and is working on several similar cases, says the prospects for recourse for people like Condeff are dismal. “She could file a complaint with the Office of Police Accountability, but they’re really about gathering information and avoiding lawsuits.”

Richmond says that one issue victims face, should they file a civil suit, is the prospect of being legally outspent and outgunned. Litigation against the police, he says, has a way of dragging on and on.

Meanwhile, pro bono lawyers are in short supply. “There are about a dozen of us who do this kind of work regularly,” says Richmond. “And all of us get more calls than we can handle.”

Cases such as this occur with dismaying frequency.

Like Condeff, Dana Hamlett had already been warmed by a beer or three the morning of March 2 when he walked into the Ballard Skate Park and sat down on a bench. Shortly before, two different people had called police to report that a man was drinking in public and had yelled at a woman on the street.

In a white jersey marked “24,” there was no mistaking Hamlett. The homeless 34-year-old often has run-ins with the police and has a long record, mostly for trespass and theft. But a witness who was in the park that morning says Hamlett was minding his own business when an officer approached him.

“ He was sitting on the bench singing to himself, not bothering anybody,” says Bill Bagosy, who sells papers for Real Change. “He was drunk, but he wasn’t obnoxious.”

Officer Aaron Kamalu offers a different perspective.

“ I walked into the park and saw a suspect sitting on a park bench drinking a beer. He looked up at me and stood up. I told him to sit back down. He muttered something and sat down.”

Bagosy says Hamlett stayed on the bench and the cop asked him something. The reply must not have been good: Kamalu briefly turned away from the man on the bench. When he turned to again face Hamlett, it was to mace him in the face.

Blinded, Hamlett got up and tried to walk away, Bagosy says, but the officer was shouting to get on the ground. When Hamlett didn’t, the officer maced him at least twice more before taking him down, putting a knee to his back and cuffing him.

By then, another officer had arrived, Bagosy says. The two put Hamlett face down in a shallow puddle. Bagosy says Hamlett remained that way 45 minutes to an hour before a fire truck arrived to wash him off.

“ These cops,” Bagosy says indignantly. “It was like they were having a blast.”

“ As I waited for a response from my dispatcher, S/Hamlett got up [from the bench] and attempted to leave. I told him he was not free to leave. S/Hamlett balled up his fists, glared at me and growled, ‘I am bigger than you, stronger than you, and I will kick your ass!’ I believed that S/Hamlett was capable of carrying out this threat since he appeared to be several inches taller than me and about 50 pounds heavier.”

Bagosy saw no resistance. Kamalu’s report makes no mention of the macing. That may show up on a separate “use of force” form that was filed for the incident, but police say it can’t be released until charges are filed.

But, nearly two months later, there are no charges for what Hamlett was picked up for: harassment of a police officer.

Richmond says that an increase in police misconduct came with the expansion of community policing that began with the Clinton administration. “When you put 100,000 new cops on the street, there’s a drop in the quality of training and the quality of the recruit.”

“ There is a much more militarized model for policing now. Police aren’t the problem-solvers they once were. Now they are troops, and they are trained to have a more adversarial view. Everything is viewed as a potential attack.” n

[Contact]

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