“If not for an in-car video, Isaac Ocak might be known as a violent criminal instead of a victim of excessive force. Now 23, Ocak says he would’ve been forced to live his life with an assault conviction except that a video of his violent 2010 arrest countered allegations that he attacked several Seattle police officers. ‘If there were no video of the event that happened it would’ve been my word against the word of four police officers,’ Ocak said Tuesday,” according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
He could have added, “four lying police officers who filed phony assault charges but somehow are still serving on the Seattle police force.” Seattle is a city where 100 street cops sued to keep the city from implementing a revised use-of-force (UOF) policy after being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice for bias and excessive force. (A federal judge peremptorily dismissed the cops’ lawsuit.) A city that has new police management that has promised changes. Well, I have a suggestion for change: Fire dishonest cops who gratuitously beat up citizens and then lie about it. Because cops, due to the authority given them, must be trustworthy.
“The day he was beaten by police,” the P-I reported, “Ocak had stopped at West Seattle’s Westwood Village shopping mall …. He was driving his girlfriend’s car at that time; officers began manhandling Ocak when he demanded to call his girlfriend in an effort to explain why he had the car. Ocak’s attorney … said in court papers that his client was arrested for ‘contempt of cop’ – for upsetting police by not being adequately demure and deferential. ‘They wanted to teach him a lesson to not speak up to SPD officers as … per SPD custom,’ [his attorneys] said in the civil complaint. … Video of the incident shows [an officer] punching Ocak in the face as other officers force his head onto the hood of a police cruiser. The altercation left Ocak bruised, bloodied and, later, scared. He was also charged with fourth-degree assault.”
It took the Seattle City Attorney’s office two years to drop the phony charges against Ocak, and another two years to settle Ocak’s federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and the lying, abusive cops. If new police chief Kathleen O’Toole is serious about changing the Seattle Police Department’s depraved culture, she’ll remove these cops from the force, notwithstanding the police union’s whining.
The photo shows Ocak’s injuries after the arrest. In the video below, Officer Larry Longley begins punching Ocak in the head about 7 minutes into the video. 