Taking Advantage of Loophole, Seattle Chief Lessened Discipline for Cop Who Pepper Sprayed Jesse Hagopian

Officer Sandra Delafuente YouTube

In early 2014, former Seattle police chief Harry Bailey sparked the first political crisis of Mayor Ed Murray's term when he quietly reversed misconduct findings in at least six cases. The decision was roundly condemned after it came to light, and under pressure, Bailey and Murray admitted it was a mistake.

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City Council Member Nick Licata said police discipline had entered the "twilight zone." Bailey took advantage of "the little loophole that gets Seattle cops out of trouble," Crosscut reported at the time.

Almost two years later, the loopholes that allow police chiefs to quietly change discipline remain open, and one of them is being used.

We can see this in the case of Sandra Delafuente, who, according to public records obtained by a police accountability activist and given to The Stranger, is the officer who pepper sprayed Garfield High School teacher Jesse Hagopian on Martin Luther King Day in 2015. Hagopian is also a prominent education activist.

The incident, thank god, was caught on video:

Last month, I reported that Delafuente was orally reprimanded following an investigation by the Office of Professional Accountability (OPA), which found that she used unauthorized force and improperly deployed pepper spray.

I learned later, however, that Chief Kathleen O'Toole did not follow the disciplinary recommendation of an internal panel, which included OPA Director Pierce Murphy, the department's top misconduct investigator. Murphy told me he and the panel recommended a one-day suspension without pay—not a mere oral reprimand.

"My impression is that a one day suspension would be in order," said Licata when informed of the disciplinary change. "An oral reprimand, given what I know, doesn't seem to send the right message." Public Safety Chair Bruce Harrell, Council President Tim Burgess, and Mayor Ed Murray were also unaware of the downgraded discipline for Delafuente.

The department neatly avoided mentioning the chief's decision to impose lesser discipline for the officer when I asked about the results of the OPA investigation last month. It sent me this statement making it sound as if the chief had possibly gone beyond the recommended discipline by mandating extra training: "The Chief agreed with the OPA's sustained finding and imposed additional training and an oral reprimand for the officer."

The practice of quietly overriding the discipline recommended by the department's civilian-led accountability arm led the Seattle city council, in 2007, to take action. It passed a law requiring that the chief notify the mayor and city council with letters explaining the rationale for such a decision.

But the law left a loophole: Only when the chief disagrees with the findings of the OPA investigation does she need to notify elected officials. If she disagrees with the recommended discipline based upon those findings, and chooses to implement a different sanction, there's no such requirement. The chief could, say, overrule a recommendation for a six-month suspension and decide to dock only a single day's pay instead—and she wouldn't have to tell anyone. There's also no requirement that the OPA Director go on record with his original disciplinary recommendation.

Obviously, there's not much point in having a civilian-led accountability system if the police chief can override it willy-nilly without anyone noticing.

In a statement, OPA Auditor Anne Levinson said the disciplinary process should require notification "when either a finding or discipline is different than recommended and that the OPA Director's recommendation be documented." [Emphasis added.]

"The CPC and I incorporated both of these improvements into to the proposed ordinance we drafted and provided to the Mayor's Office at the beginning of 2015," Levinson added. "Those are just a couple of the systemic improvements that were not implemented because the ordinance was never submitted to the Council."

The Community Police Commission first recommended closing this loophole way back in April 2014. Mayor Murray, you may recall, waited until October 2014 to endorse the CPC's recommendations. Then he violated his own pledge to introduce the accountability ordinance based on those recommendations by early 2015.

Aside from refocusing attention on the disciplinary loophole, O'Toole's decision to downgrade the discipline for Officer Delafuente raises questions about whether transparency and accountability standards under her leadership live up to her department's rhetoric.

More than one week ago, I asked the department's public affairs unit why the chief changed the discipline from what was recommended. The unit hasn't responded. Yesterday, I asked whether any other parties were notified about the decision. No response.

I also asked for a tally of other cases in which the chief has changed the discipline from what was recommended, but I've received no response to that question, either. OPA Director Pierce Murphy said that information is not tracked, and it would take a manual search of records to find out.

There's an eerie parallel between the Delafuente case and an incident early in the police career of Officer Cynthia Whitlatch, who O'Toole fired in September. Records obtained by The Stranger showed that during her first year on the force, Whitlatch was investigated for yelling profanities at a Petco clerk. An internal memo recommended a one day suspension. But an assistant chief crossed out the suspension and replaced it with a written reprimand (which, by the way, is still a higher level of discipline than O'Toole ordered for Delafuente over the pepper spraying of a teacher during a peaceful demonstration).

In 2010, Delafuente stood around on the scene while Officer Shandy Cobane threatened to "beat the fucking Mexican piss" out of an innocent man and stomped on him, according to KOMO. She joined the force roughly three years prior, KOMO reported. The SPD did not respond to queries about whether she faced any discipline for her role in that incident.

OPA records shared with The Stranger by the Center for Open Policing show she's been investigated for potential violations of policies on bias-free policing and dashcam video recording. It's not clear what the investigations found.

"The Chief of Police has sent a strong and appropriate signal," said City Council President Tim Burgess after the department announced the Whitlatch firing. "Officer behavior that compromises public trust is not acceptable in Seattle."

What signal does the chief's decision to downgrade the discipline for Delafuente send?

To K.L. Shannon, the Seattle-King County NAACP police accountability chair and an organizer of the MLK Day rallies, "It's a slap in our faces. It's a slap to the relationships between the African-American community and the police department... I'm shocked, but at the same time, I'm not surprised."

This post has been updated.