Seattle cops aren’t trained to fight fair, nor are they taught to shoot to wound, says a Seattle Police Department report on officers’ use of force between 2006 and 2009, according to the Seattle Times. When officers find themselves in violent encounters, they’re trained to win the fight quickly, said the report. Police use of force dropped 37 percent in the four-year period, from 872 incidents in 2006 to 549 in 2009.
The four-year period covered in the report does not include a series of high-profile incidents between officers and minorities last year, including the ftal shooting of woodcarver John Williams. Those incidents prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct a preliminary review of Seattle police practices. The Justice Department review, requested by the American Civil Liberties Union and 34 other community groups, is to include scrutiny of instances of alleged criminal civil-rights violations by individual officers as well as a “global” look at the department to determine whether, as the ACLU and others allege, there exists a “pattern and practice” of civil-rights violations by officers.