Otto Zehm, a mentally handicapped, 36-year-old unemployedjanitor, wasbeaten to death in a Spokane convenience store in March 2006.
"All I wanted was a Snickers bar," pleaded the battered and bloody man before he was gagged by his assailant.
On November4, Karl Thompson, the man convicted of killing Zehm, was taken to jail. Severaldozen members of Thompson’s gang were gathered outside the courtroom – most ofthem proudly wearing the colors – to “show their honor” by offering themurderer a public salute. Thompson – whose hands weren’t cuffed, inviolation of long-established rules – smiled and returned the gesture. Zehm’s still-grieving mother and several otherrelatives stood just a few feet away.
The gang in question is the Spokane Police Department, whicheven now refuses to acknowledge that Thompson – who was a nominee to becomeChief at the time he murdered Zehm – ever did anything wrong when he clubbed,tased, and suffocated a terrified, innocent man who did nothing to provoke theattack, and who put up no violent resistance to the assault.
Zehm had done custodial work at Fairchild Air Force Base andwaswell-known, and equally well-liked, by many people in his neighborhood,some of whom were aware that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He wasin the daily habit of visiting a convenience store called Zip Trip to purchasejunk food – usually Pepsi and a candy bar.
On March 18, 2006, Zehm retrieved some money at an ATM nearZip Trip. Something in his behavior struck two girls as odd, so they called thepolice. Although there was no reason to believe that Zehm had committed acrime, Thompson entered the store as if he were pursuing a dangerous fugitive.Security video documents that Thompson approached Zehm from behind, whileretrieving his custom-made, over-sized ironwood nightstick.
Thompson introduced himself to Zehm by shouting at him todrop the two-liter bottle of Pepsi. According to the officer, the startled andpuzzled man responded by quite reasonably asking, “Why?” Thompson interpretedthat Zehm’s fleeting non-compliance as an immediate and intolerable threat toofficer safety. So he rushed at the terrified man and began to beat him withhis nightstick – clubbing him first in the legs, then on the shoulders, neck,and head. Blows to the head are defined as lethal strikes under the SpokanePD’s use-of-force policy, justifiable only when a suspect threatens the life ofa police officer or bystanders.
Asthe security video demonstrates, Zehm never put up a fight. He retreatedfrom Thompson, and then made a pitiable attempt to use his bottle of soda todeflect blows aimed at his face. Thompson escalated his assault by tasering himat least three times. Thompson was eventually joined by six other other policeofficers. Eventually, Thompson was actually sitting on Zehm, who was face-downon the floor.
The victim was hog-tied in a “four-pointrestraint,” meaning that his hands were shackled to his ankles. Departmentpolicy guidelines emphasize that suspects restrained in this fashion are neverto be placed face-down, since this posture can result in “positional asphyxia.”Yet Zehm was left in that position for about seventeen minutes, and at onepoint an officer actually pulled his feet backwards – which increased the riskof suffocation by placing pressure on the victim’s diaphragm.
After emergency personnel arrived, they were instructed to digthe Taser barbs out of Zehm’s flesh. They were also asked to provide a“non-rebreathing” oxygen mask; this was placed over the victim’s face,supposedly to prevent him from assaulting the officers by spitting on them.This mask was not designed or intended to be used without being attached to anoxygen supply. Once the mask was placed on Zehm’s face, the traumatized andpanicking man – who was already at severe risk of hypoxia – was forced tobreathe through an easily obstructed opening roughly the size of a quarter.
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| Thomspon, immediately after assaulting Zehm. |
Did Thompson and his cohorts deliberately set out tosuffocate Zehm? Every step they took led inexorably to that outcome, andincompetence can only explain so much. That was the outcome, whether it was theresult of deliberate malice or depraved indifference. Zehm stopped breathingabout seventeen minutes after Thompson’s initial assault, and died in a nearbyhospital about two days later. But the police department’s assault on Zehmcontinued while he struggled for life in the hospital, and didn’t end with hisdeath.
On the day of the beating, Police Chief Jim Nicks told themedia that Zehm had “lunged” at Thompson, thereby threatening his life. Otherofficers claimed that Zhem had a prior arrest for assaulting an officer. Bothclaims were conscious, deliberate lies.
About two weeks after Zehm’s death, Detective TerryFerguson, who “investigated” the incident for the Spokane PD, filed a reportclaiming that none of the seven officers who assaulted Zehm committed a crime.Ferguson had little time to investigate what was done to Zehm, because she was toobusy investigating the victim. The detective persuaded a judge to issuewarrants to pry into every aspect of Zehm’s medical, employment, and personalhistory, on the pretext that the deceased was suspected of “assaulting a policeofficer.” This was actually an unsuccessful effort to exhume something –anything – that could be used to denigrate the victim.
After the pressure of a threatened lawsuit, Spokane CountyProsecutor Steve Tucker released the video recordings of the assault, which heand the police had diligently suppressed. The recordings contradicted everycritical element of Thompson’s version of the event, beginning with the claim thatZehm had “lunged” at the officer.
With no criminal charges filed against Thompson, Zehm’sfamily announced its intention to sue the City of Spokane, and the JusticeDepartment began a civil rights inquiry. In March 2009 – three years after thekilling – Chief Anne Kirkpatrick (who had replaced Chief Nicks) issued a publicstatement offering her “unequivocal support” to Thompson. “Based on all theinformation and evidence I have reviewed, I have determined that Officer KarlThompson acted consistent with the law,” Kirkpatrick insisted.
A few months later, Chief Kirkpatrick assigned Thompson –who was, recall, the subject of a federal civil rights investigation – to helptrain other Spokane police officers how to deal with “high-risk liabilityincidents,” which have been plentiful.
Spokane’s municipal government, whichpaid out $2.5 million to resolve police-related lawsuits between 1996 and 2007,has a policy of filing counter-suits accusing citizens of “conspiracy to misusethe judicial process.” This is made possible by a state statute intended toprotect police against supposedly frivolous lawsuits. Given all of this it’snot surprising that Chief Kirkpatrick’s unqualified endorsement of Thompson’sactions was coupled with an unyielding official line blaming the victim for hisown death. “Any injury or damage suffered by Mr. Zehm was caused solely byreason of his conduct and willful resistance,” proclaimed the City of Spokane’sofficial response to the family’s civil lawsuit.
Mr. Zehm’s “conduct” – which, according to Chief Kirkpatrickand Spokane’s municipal government, justified the use of lethal force --consisted of doing exactly nothing. Thenagain, he was armed with a bottle ofPepsi, which apparently left the heroic Officer Thompson no choice but to stagea preemptive strike with his club and Taser. Perhaps if it had been Mt. Dew,the use of tactical nukes would have been appropriate.
“If all [the victim] wanted to do was surrender, he couldhave done so,” insisted Officer Terry Preuninger, the Spokane PD’s SWAT TeamLeader and patrol tactics instructor, during the trial. “[Officer Thompson’s]assessment was accurate. He continued to use force. It did allow him to keepthat man from hurting him or anyone else.”
Thompson began his attack within seconds of arriving at thestore – before Zehm had a chance to “surrender.” Furthermore, the victim wasbacking away from the officer. According to Preuninger – who, as SWAT leader,approaches such situations with a militarized close-and-kill mindset – thisdidn’t matter: “Picture wrestlers or boxers. It’s definitely not an indicationthat they don’t want to hurt or assault you because they move back.”
“A police officer becomes an expert in evaluation ofbehavior or picking out little things that are different,” Preuninger assertedon the stand. Victor Boutros, chief prosecutor during the trial, treated thatclaim with laudable contempt, mockingthis supposed preternatural gift ofdiscernment as a “Spidey sense” that “can’t be impeached by citizen eyewitnesses or video. Only [Thompson] could have seen those things.”
Furthermore, according to Preuninger, police have plenaryauthority to use lethal force even when their perceptions are in error: “Apolice officer can make a mistake. An officer could believe their [sic] lifewas in danger or they [sic] were in danger of being assaulted when in fact we couldgo back in hindsight and show that’s not true. But the force would beauthorized.”
This is to say: From the perspective of the individual whotrains the Spokane PD regarding the use of force, Karl Thompson was completelyright – but he could have been entirely wrong, and he would still have had theauthority to kill Otto Zehm. This is because police officers, who face anall-encompassing threat from the public they supposedly protect, must beentitled to employ aggressive violence at all times, Preuninger maintains: “Ifyou approach law enforcement situations the same way you would a neighborhoodmeeting … it will directly lead to you getting murdered on the job or gettinghurt or assaulted.”
Really?
Between 1867and 2009, a total of 23 law Spokane County law enforcement officers –police, Sheriff’s deputies, and one member of the County Game Commission – diedin the line of duty. Eleven of them – fewer than half that total – were killedby suspected criminals. Six died in traffic accidents. Two were struck andkilled by drunk drivers. Two were fatally shot by fellow law enforcement personnelduring training exercises (one of them was killed by a police officer showingoff a quick-draw technique), and another was a game warden shot by a hunter whowas reaching for a permit. One officer died from a heart attack during SWATtraining.
None of those line-of-duty deaths occurred because anofficer was insufficiently aggressive during one of the perilous “lawenforcement situations” that haunt Preuninger’s imagination.
Interestingly, Spokane County – which maintainsa police Honor Guard that attends police funerals throughout the Northwest –describes itself as “third in the state for line of duty deaths.” Thisillustrates – redundantly – that law enforcement is not a particularlyhazardous occupation. In Spokane, as elsewhere, the citizen in a “lawenforcement situation” is at far greater risk than the police officer.
A little more than a year after Otto Zehm was murdered byThompson and his cohorts, 37-year-oldTrent Yohe, the father of a young child, was beaten, tasered, and hog-tied bySheriff’s deputies who had illegally entered his home.
Yohe was asleep when the deputies invaded his home. The last wordshe heard before lapsing into an irreversible coma were orders from hisassailants to stop resisting.
Shortlyafter the incident, Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich admitted in an official memothat at the time Yohe – a known meth addict subject to Grand Mal seizures – “wasnever under arrest.” The County eventuallypaid $50,000 stolen from local tax victims to settle a lawsuit filed byYohe’s family.
The deputies who murdered Yohe followed almost exactly thesame protocols used by the murderers of Otto Zehm a year earlier. Sheriff Knezovichdefiantly insistedthat he saw no reason to change those procedures.
This isn’t to say, however, that the Sheriff wascategorically opposed to reform: In a joint press conference with ChiefKirkpatrick, Knezovich indignantly protested the use of the term “hog-tied” todescribe the method used by officers to truss their prone and helpless victims;the appropriate term, he insisted, is “hobbled.”
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In keeping with Sheriff Knezovich’s delicate sensibilities, Clarksuggested that language like the following would be suitable: “Trent Yohe, amethamphetamine addict, was holiday gift-wrapped after a spirited difference ofopinion with sheriff’s deputies.” What about the eyewitness report thatdeputies had kicked out the victim’s false teeth? Easy: Yohe wasn’t brutalized –he “participated in a police-assisted dental plan.” And henceforth, a Taserwill be called a “joy buzzer.”
Clark’s essay was aimed at the Spokane PD’s institutionalvanity, a target that’s impossible to miss. This prompted Officer Preuninger – whowept openly when Thompson was taken away to jail -- to rebuke the impudent
Mundane via a letterto the editor in which thedecorated SWAT team leader struck the familiar pose ofpoliceman-as-maligned savior.
“Sleep well, Mr. Clark, because no matter how much youinsult me, no matter how low you go to belittle my profession, if you findyourself in harm’s way, you need only call and one of us will come and risk ourlife to save yours: an irony I am quite sure you can never fathom,” whinedPreuninger in a tone worthy of a passive-aggressive teenage girl.
As is almost always the case in such matters, it is OfficerPreuninger who suffers from a severe irony deficiency: None of the officers hetrained intervened to save Otto Zehm when that innocent man was being beaten todeath by Karl Thompson, who was a “mentor” to the entire force and theirpreferred candidate to be chief.
Following Thompson’s guilty verdict, U.S. Attorney MikeOrmsby asserted that “This is not an indictment of our entire police force.” Oh,yes it is.
Thank you, once again!
On behalf of the entire Grigg family, I want to tell you how much we appreciate your very generous donations. This means more than I can adequately express. Have a wonderful Christmas!
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