After a Seattle police officer shot John T. Williams Aug. 30, the last thing his brother Rick Williams wanted to see or deal with was the police. But he says officers keep getting in his face and harassing him and other Native Americans at the park near the Pike Place Market.
Williams sits on a bench and carves totems at the park like his brother did. Since the shooting, he says, officers have swarmed the park, run off natives, stared him down and called him aside to express condolences that have turned into lectures about his brother's death.
Things came to head on Oct. 21, Williams says, after a supporter came to meet with him at Victor Steinbrueck Park and was herself involved in an incident with police. She has now filed a harassment complaint with the Seattle Police Department's Office of Professional Accountability.
Fern Renville is a Native American and director of a youth theater group called Red Eagle Soaring. She says she went down to the park on Oct. 21 to speak with Williams about creating a website for him to sell his traditional First Nations carvings. He currently sells them on the street.
As Renville sat on the bench next to Williams, she says she saw two bicycle officers standing across the street at the corner of Western Avenue and Virginia Street. Their arms were folded over their chests, she says, and they were staring directly at Williams.
She took out her cell phone and snapped a picture of them. One of the officers took out a camera and photographed them, she says. Unnerved, she, Williams, his girlfriend and his son walked across the street to ask why.
As she approached, she says, one of the officers sneered at her, "Got a fucking problem?" Renville says she was shocked and questioned the officer's use of profanity. She says he replied, "Can you prove I did?"
She took out a notebook to get the names and badge numbers of the officers. Within minutes, the other officer accused Williams' 16-year-old son of spitting on his bike and demanded the boy's identification.
The group went back to the bench, she says, and two more bike officers arrived right beside them and were joined by the officers from across the street. After that, she says, the four officers surrounded the group, spoke to her in loud voices and mocked her. They put their faces next to hers and repeatedly took pictures of her, she says.
"My heart was pounding. I was really scared," Renville says. "They were just so hostile."
Kathryn Olson, director of SPD's Office of Professional Accountability, confirms that SPD received Renville's complaint, but says she cannot comment on pending investigations.
Just days after the incident on Oct. 25, however, Olson and Mike Sanford, SPD's assistant chief of patrol operations, took the unusual step of sitting down with Rick Williams in Victor Steinbrueck Park to discuss what Williams sees going on in the park.
This reporter was there.
The police pick on the homeless just struggling to survive, but don't bother people with money, Williams told them. The constant contact and surveillance by police, he said, had driven everyone out of the park and cost him money in totem sales to tourists when he's behind on his rent.
"It's been a week now and we haven't sold anything because your guys are going by every day or they're standing across the street by that post in formation," Williams said to police. "How am I supposed to handle that? You want to intimidate me?"
If there's intimidation going on in the park, it has to stop, Sanford told Williams.
But Olson said it's a delicate balancing act between perceptions of the police and the need for regular patrols at the park.
"I just want to reassure you that ... there's a message you're giving us, that you have been giving us, that's been heard by a number of people" at SPD, Olson told Williams.
But, she said, "That doesn't mean that change happens overnight."