Cur­rently at in my Law in Soci­ety class (Law, Soci­ety, and Jus­tice 363) at the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton we are explor­ing the inci­dence of forced use in policing—focusing at the rela­tion between the writ­ten law and the vio­lence needed to back it up. As part of this dis­cus­sion, we are in the process of read­ing Above the Law: Police and the Exces­sive Use of Force by Jerome Skol­nick and James Fyfe.

They argue that “exces­sive force cases that reach the courts show that the ques­tion­able con­duct [] has hap­pened because supe­ri­ors are so indif­fer­ent to the mis­con­duct as to be grossly neg­li­gent in the per­for­mance of their duties” and that “a recent case in Mason County, Wash­ing­ton, depicts [this]” (Skol­nick 36). Imag­ine my sur­prise to see our small and seem­ingly harm­less county being depicted in such a manner!

What fol­lows is an attempt to recre­ate and ana­lyze this rep­re­hen­si­ble inci­dent in our his­tory that occurred in 1985 through 1986. For the remain­der of the dis­cus­sion I will be draw­ing my facts from the appeal to the United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Cir­cuit, 927 F.2d 1473 (Davis v. Mason County).

This is a case of both police bru­tal­ity (actions intended to hurt per­formed with mal­ice) and the exces­sive use of force by Mason County Deputies against pri­vate cit­i­zens. These four inci­dents occurred from June 1985 to March 1986.

1. “ Early on the morn­ing of June 29, 1985 as Doug Durbin returned home from a local tav­ern, Deputy Ray Sow­ers fol­lowed him and waited out­side of Durbin’s home. Deputy Tom Fur­rer later arrived as backup. Sow­ers, flick­ing an elec­tric stun gun on and off, ordered Durbin out of his house. Durbin, who com­plied, was arrested for drunk dri­ving. After tak­ing one step toward his house, the two deputies tack­led Durbin and threw him to the ground. Though Durbin never attempted to resist, Sow­ers began to beat him on the back of his head with his fist. In the patrol car on the way to the jail Sow­ers slammed on the brakes, caus­ing Durbin, who was hand­cuffed and thus defense­less, to smash into the screen with his face.”
2. “Deputy Doug Quantz pulled over Don Tay­lor as he was dri­ving through Shel­ton on the after­noon of July 20, 1985, allegedly for dri­ving too fast. Quantz ordered Tay­lor to spread-eagle against the patrol vehi­cle and pro­ceeded to con­duct a pat-down search. Under the guise of this search, Quantz twisted the skin on Taylor’s arms and legs, struck him on the sides, hit him in the tes­ti­cles, and slammed him against the side of the patrol car. Later, in the jail ele­va­tor, Quantz hit Tay­lor in the kid­neys with his fist.” Tyler had his charges dropped after sign­ing a legal doc­u­ment promis­ing not to sue the county, and thus was not a mem­ber in the sub­se­quent lawsuit.
3. “John Davis and his fif­teen year-old nephew, Wayne Broughton, were dri­ving a loaded hay wagon drawn by a team of four horses on the after­noon of July 28, 1985. Because some cars were slowed behind the wagon, Deputy Jack Gard­ner came along­side the wagon in his patrol vehi­cle and, using his loud­speaker, ordered Davis to pull over. Davis lost con­trol over the horses, who had been fright­ened by the noise of the loud­speaker. Gard­ner pulled in front of the wagon, took out his gun, pointed it at Davis and Broughton and threat­ened to shoot if they did not stop. As Davis got down from the wagon to attend to his horses, Gard­ner beat him on the legs with his night­stick and struck him on the head. He then knocked him down to the ground and con­tin­ued to beat him. After Deputies Pete Cribben and Garry Ohlde arrived at the scene, all three hit him, kicked him, and shocked him with an elec­tric stun gun. Accord­ing to one wit­ness, Davis “looked like he had been dipped in a bucket of blood” after the offi­cers fin­ished beat­ing him.“
   • Davis was arrested and charged with felony assault, resist­ing arrest and obstruct­ing an offi­cer. The mis­de­meanor charges were dis­missed, and a jury, which found that Davis was act­ing in self-defense, acquit­ted him of the felony charge.
4. “When Deputy Ray Sow­ers observed four young peo­ple talk­ing between a car and a truck on the evening of March 15, 1986, he pulled over both vehi­cles. Sow­ers ordered Ed Rodius, a pas­sen­ger in the truck, into the patrol car after he asked why they had been stopped. When Rodius refused to com­ply, Sow­ers jumped on Rodius, choked him, pulled on his hair, and then threw him to the ground and rubbed his face on the gravel of the park­ing lot.”

You may (much as I was) how the police force we have today came from these mali­cious and indis­crim­i­nate episodes of exces­sive force, luck­ily the case hinged on learn­ing the same thing. I’ll spare you most of the legal argu­ments and logic; while I find it fas­ci­nat­ing, I doubt most of you would. If you are inter­ested, ref­er­ence case the above.

Basi­cally, the courts found that “the train­ing that the deputies received was woe­fully inad­e­quate, if it can be said to have existed at all. Sher­iff Stairs him­self never attended the State Train­ing Acad­emy and Under­sh­er­iff Harry “Bud” Hays had nei­ther train­ing nor expe­ri­ence. Although Wash­ing­ton law requires all police offi­cers to com­plete acad­emy train­ing within fif­teen months of hire, Deputy Sow­ers did not com­plete the acad­emy until six­teen months after he was hired” and instead of hav­ing acad­emy train­ing, they actu­ally had a “field train­ing pro­gram” that was “a joke.” One of the deputies had only “min­i­mal field train­ing” and involve­ment in a “pro­gram in which teenagers with inter­est in law enforce­ment rode with officers.”

My par­ents moved to Mason County in 1990 after both myself and my sis­ter were born and ini­tially raised in Seat­tle. My first mem­o­ries of the county and Shel­ton were of the years after these inci­dents, and from what I recall, it was spi­ral­ing down­ward. The for­est indus­try was declin­ing, and in many cases the county sim­ply didn’t have the fund­ing to pay for pro­grams. But state man­dated train­ing for police offi­cers? This was a pro­gram that sim­ply couldn’t be skimped on—and the deputies paid for it with trial rewards levied against them.

I don’t really want to get into this any­more because I’m your eyes will glaze over and vow to never read any­thing I write ever again. I hope you found this inter­est­ing if noth­ing else; what I would really be inter­ested in is locat­ing either the offi­cers or civil­ians involved in these incidents—that would be a fas­ci­nat­ing project.