The mother of a young Black man killed by Seattle police in 2017 is outraged and demanding an apology after learning officers kept a mock tombstone marking her son’s death on a shelf in a precinct break room.
The room at the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct also was decorated with a large “Trump 2020″ flag, in possible violation of state law and department policy regulating officers’ involvement in partisan politics while on duty.
The items were captured on officer body-camera video taken in January 2021, just months after the precinct became a focal point of Seattle’s protests against police violence and racism, part of the national outcry after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. The video was obtained as part of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Seattle’s graffiti laws, as the officers were on their way to arrest a group of protesters using chalk and charcoal to write political statements on a precinct exterior wall.
