Apparently, we'll be footing the bill.
Crime article in the PI:
Deputy's gun used in rape, records show
The writers and editors have carefully moved the most salacious detail first.
Two days before a King County deputy sheriff's live-in lover allegedly shot and
killed a convenience-store clerk, he used the deputy's handcuffs and gun to rape
a man in their Kenmore home while the cop slept upstairs, according to police
reports.
This isn't the main point of this article, it's the a piece of evidence against you and me.
The incident in August is one of many revelations regarding King County
Sheriff's Deputy Ferenc Zana's disastrous affair with a mentally ill felon. They
were contained in more than 900 pages of documents the Sheriff's Office was
forced to produce Monday under a court order obtained by the Seattle P-I.
Also, the documents reveal that although the gun allegedly used by
Christopher Bistryski to kill store clerk Mohammed-Imad "Dimitri" Harb was
Zana's private weapon, the fatal bullets were issued by the Sheriff's Office.
That could significantly increase King County taxpayers' liability for damages
to the dead man's wife and four children.
Yep, bullets the King County taxpayer paid for were used to kill this poor clerk, so we should also pay off his family. Seems like we're paying for both ends. But we can't really be expected to pay for this, can we?
"That changes everything. That's significant," said Janet Rice, a prominent
Seattle litigator who in an interview earlier Monday had indicated the county
might escape liability because the shooting was done with Zana's private gun
rather than his service weapon.
Translation: I think there's a big wad of dough available.
But what did the King County Sheriff's Office do to cause this shooting?
The documents describe how Zana, a veteran King County deputy, contacted
teenager Bistryski on the Internet and started a dating relationship with the
schizophrenic felon with suicidal tendencies. They moved in together in June
2004.
Eight months before Harb lay dead in the Plaid Pantry, Seattle
police had warned the King County Sheriff's Office that Bistryski had a criminal
background and that he was driving around Seattle's Central Area in Zana's
personal car with another felon. Such a relationship would run counter to
Sheriff's Office rules. A few months later, King County sheriff's deputies had
twice responded to Zana's home after Bistryski had attempted suicide by slashing
his wrists.
"This is an ongoing pattern (of) suicide attempts and
dangerous confrontations with citizens and police," wrote Deputy Cary Coblantz,
in an incident report after the second suicide attempt on April 23, 2005.
"Christopher is clearly a major danger to himself as well as to
others."
Despite these warnings and opportunities to step in to end the
relationship -- and perhaps to save Harb's life -- two top commanders in the
Sheriff's Office did nothing more than counsel Zana that his relationship with
Bistryski might embarrass the department, and extract a promise from Zana that
he would kick Bistryski out of his house if he continued to act out and abuse
alcohol.
So, this is it: The county didn't give some guy a gun and tell him to commit a crime, they didn't give the guy bullets when he was running around yelling crazy things, they didn't even look the other way while a crime was going on. The county employed a police officer who made bad, but apparently not illegal or unethical, personal choices and became involved with someone who was crazy and possibly suicidal didn't fire and the officer's crazy lover stole some bullets from the officer and shot someone. Yeah, that I think the taxpayer needs to pay out seven figures for that.
The article writers show where their feelings lie by following up with the next line.
Two months after the shooting, both commanders, Rebecca Norton and Robin Fenton, were promoted to major and chief.
Message: King County Sheriff's Office rewards bad decisions.
Only after the high-profile slaying did the Sheriff's Office hold a formal
investigation into Zana's questionable relationship with Bistryski. The
Sheriff's Office then decided to fire Zana because of his rule violations, but
he resigned instead.
Message: and then they cover them up.
"It could have been prevented easily, if there were some people who really
care," said Tarek Harb, the dead man's younger brother. "Each one of those
parties was very responsible for this crime."
How could this have been prevented? By what means could the count have prevent this? Yes, Birtryski was trouble, and apparently Zana's bosses told him this, but only the Pre-crime unit of psychic cops knows the difference between troubled young man and future murderer.
"The Sheriff's Office did as much as it could by warning Zana," said sheriff's
spokesman Sgt. John Urquhart in an e-mail message to the P-I. "There is only so
much any employer can do (especially a government employer) to delve into the
private life of one of its employees. There is a limit on our authority to
control the off-duty relationships of our deputies, like spouses, domestic
partners or children. Remember, Chris (Bistryski) wasn't just a roommate. He was
Zana's domestic partner, much like your wife or girlfriend."Records show Bistryski had medical insurance from the county as Zana's domestic partner.
This is another story, like Jim McGreevy of New Jersey or Jim West of Spokane, where the presence of homosexuality clouds an other wise clear issue. With McGreevy or West, their abuse of power would be wrong if it wasn't "gay" but, because it was "gay" if you didn't look closely you might think that being gay was the issue. In this case, the realtionship seems worse because it is between two men, but as Urquhart states it's the same as if it was between a man and a woman.
To believe the county is responsible you must either believe that the
county has a right to tell officers to leave your mentally unstable spouse,
girlfriend, or boyfriend or that gay officers should face a double
standard.
The article continues describing and allegeged rape incident
that involved Bistryski and police cuffs and a handgun shortly before the
killing. If you want to read that check out the article, but I won't
repeat any of that here. The article then goes on to tell us how hard it
is for the Harb's widow financially.
Fawzieh Harb, the wife of the dead convenience store clerk, quit her job
after the shooting to care for her four children, ages 5, 6, 15 and 16, because
she could no longer work and care for them, said her attorney, Roger Hawkes of
Seattle.
The family income has shrunk from nearly $6,000 a month to a third of
that amount, since the widow now relies entirely on Social Security and
workman's compensation, Hawkes said.
Her lender is in the process of foreclosing two loans on the Harb's
1,500-square-foot Lynnwood home, and she is trying to sell it to cover some of
the loan proceeds, but it won't cover it all, Hawkes said. She has moved with
the children to Southern California to be near one of her brothers.
Two prominent attorneys who specialize in such cases said the Sheriff's
Office could be facing as much as a seven-digit liability for Harb's death.
The saddness of Harb's widow's story make the county no more liable.
"If it had been a service weapon involved, I think there would be no question of liability," said Connelly of Tacoma, who has litigated numerous cases against government agencies.
"It sounds to me that they were almost more worried about being embarrassed than stopping that guy from hurting someone," Connelly said of the Sheriff's Office. "That's bothersome."
By bothersome, Connelly mean there's a load of dough available. The service weapon or bullets has no bearing on liability. Imagine this. Zana is a salemen of Acme Corporation. He has a company car. Crazy boyfriend Bistryski steals this company car to run over Harb. Is Acme Corporation responsible because they didn't prevent this?
When on Dec. 1, internal investigations Capt. Ken Wardstrom wrote a memorandum detailing why the two commanders, Norton and Fenton, recommended that Zana be fired, he emphasized the embarrassment.
"After Chris' second suicide attempt, you promised Major Fenton that if Chris (Bistryski) had one more drink or quit his counseling, (both of which he did), you would kick Chris out of your house," Wardstrom wrote.
"You continued to tolerate Chris' drinking, despite the obvious and potential problems that existed when Chris consumed alcohol, to include self-mutilation, aggressive and or violent behavior. All of which ended in Chris being charged with murder, with the use of your firearm.
"The result of all of this has brought embarrassment to both you and the King County Sheriff's Office," Wardstrom wrote.
Hey, the county even did try to get Zana to kick out his crazy boyfriend! But they couldn't make him.
The Sheriff's Office regulations were changed a number of years ago to prohibit relationships that might bring embarrassment to the office. Previously, there had been an outright ban on associations with known felons.
Both Connelly and Rice said police agency regulations are often made vague in a belief that might help the office avoid liability when members make mistakes. Both also said police internal investigations are sometimes steered in ways that are intended to avoid liability.
Urquhart responded: "Your sources seem to make a blanket statement that IIU (internal) investigations steer away from areas where departments might be liable. What is their proof? What do they know about the Sheriff's Office when they say that? That is not the case in the King County Sheriff's Office. The purpose is to determine the facts. Regulations are not written to avoid liability."
I don't doubt that the Sheriff's Office investigations often are done in a way to avoid liability. Everythink in todays society exists to prevent liability. This blog should have a disclamer so I don't get sued (Warning, writer may only post every three months)
So here's everything that the King County Sheriff's Office did:
Former Sheriff Dave Reichert had just been elected to Congress, and current Sheriff Sue Rahr was preparing to take over from him, when the Sheriff's Office got its first warning about Bistryski.
Seattle police Officer Joel Guay had pulled over Zana's car in a high drug-crime area of Central Seattle on Dec. 23, 2004, near 23rd and Union. He found Bistryski and another felon in the car. Guay learned that Bistryski was Zana's roommate, and that he had a violent criminal history, so five days later he alerted Sgt. Joel Provenzo in the King County Internal Investigations Unit. Provenzo couldn't be reached for comment.
His captain instructed him to alert Norton, who talked with Zana on Jan. 3, 2005. Norton declined to comment, but said in her brief interview after the shooting with internal affairs that she simply discussed it with Zana, and that he was upset.
The Seattle Police Department alerted King County to Bistryski's criminal record, which included cases where he, as a teenager in Puyallup, had stolen guns and threatened to shoot up his junior high school, and set a fire.
After the shooting, both Fenton and Norton were interviewed by an internal investigator and asked how they handled the warning from Seattle police, as well as the two suicide attempts. Both described how Zana was counseled to be aware that his relationship might violate rules by embarrassing the Sheriff's Office. The interviews took only five to eight minutes each, and the investigators asked no follow-up questions regarding the Seattle police warning.
Urquhart said that's misleading, because internal investigators nearly always interview witnesses such as Fenton and Norton off tape, before recording their statements. The unrecorded statements aren't documented or on the record, Urquhart acknowledged.
"Fenton and Norton promptly took appropriate steps, limited by our authority, by warning Zana about the consequences he faced by having Chris as a partner (domestic partner). In fact, their actions were significant enough that it was possible for Sheriff Rahr to fire Zana, which she would have done had he not quit," Urquhart stated.
After the second suicide attempt, Sgt. Steven Keeney, knowing of Bistryski's past criminal record, warned Zana to keep his weapons in lockboxes. The department had earlier offered lockboxes to deputies, free of charge, but Zana didn't accept the offer, the documents show.
Clearly the department was worried, but they were more worried about Bistryski killing himself. Additionally, there wasn't enough evidence against Zana to fire him until after the killing.
In one of the five transcribed interviews between investigators and Zana released Monday, Zana told them that on the night of Harb's killing, he knew Bistryski was drunk -- and that Bistryski had a propensity to black out while drinking. In fact, Zana told them, he'd even taken steps to hide alcohol in the apartment from Bistros. Zana admitted he didn't take the same precautions in hiding his gun from Bistryski that night, instead leaving it in a fanny pack on the kitchen counter.
Zana told investigators he was in bed when he heard gunshots.
"All of a sudden it dawned on me ... oh, Jesus Christ. He's got my guns and he blew his brains out," Zana told them. "I was just hoping he fired at a squirrel or something."
Urquhart said Monday, "Sheriff Rahr felt Zana used incredibly poor judgment."
In American court people will sue for anything. With the right jury, you can win. Whenever there's a tragedy, someone needs to pay to fix it. But we're not responsible to pay because the county didn't fire Zana or force him to leave Bistryski. There's no causal relationship between the county employing Zana and Zana living with Bistryski and Bistryski killing Harb.
In the wake of P-I investigations of the Zana case as well as a number of others, two King County Council members, Bob Ferguson and Julia Patterson, have introduced legislation to create two independent civilian offices that would oversee internal investigations and regularly audit the Sheriff's Office.
Of course, any problem can be solved with more laws.