Brigham-Gate and Tom Carr's Past by Rob Smoke: Boulder Colorado
Boulder’s City Attorney Tom Carr professes Seth Brigham a growing menace, progressing daily closer to violence against the Boulder city council. It’s an entertaining notion — Seth kidnapping council and turning them into his personal slaves would make a great horror-flick — however it is crap.
Interesting that Brigham-gate should touch on that issue of unpredictable violence, when the most discussed issue of Tom’s 2009 lost Seattle city attorney campaign hinged on the same issue in another context.
During Tom’s tenure as Seattle city attorney, there were extensive “excessive use of force” complaints against the police department of the city of Seattle. Imagine you’re the mom of a developmentally disabled
teenager who gets his face smashed by a Seattle police officer — an officer who had done something similar
on other occasions, but was still on the force because of corrupt internal review. Let’s be clear: Under
Tom Carr there were 400 back-to-back-to-back non-disciplined “excessive use of force” cases.
In other words, the officer was not held accountable with removal or suspension of his job — and in many cases, where an adjunct review board did recommend to Tom that he take disciplinary action, which Tom was actually
responsible for doing, he did nothing.
The Federal Justice Dept. came in, and the Deputy Attorney General of the Human Rights Division, Thomas Perez, cited the entire oversight process as broken. In point of fact, he could have cited Tom Carr, but instead cited everyone including Tom. It was, however, up to Tom to act if others wouldn’t — or at the very minimum,
act more appropriately on a case by case basis with victims of brutality. Google “Seattle police brutality”.
In other videotaped cases, an innocent hispanic man is kicked in the head by an officer while lying on the ground.
In another case, a pregnant woman was tasered multiple times by three officers and Tom appealed a Federal judge’s
ruling to allow the woman to move forward with a civil claim for damages.
Tom did not lose the 2009 Seattle city attorney’s race to a relative newcomer
by some weird accident, or, as he claims, because it was a “bad year for incumbents.”
No, he lost the race in an absolute landslide because people were sick to death of seeing reports about police brutality and suffering victims. Jon Kita, an asian restaurant owner, interviewed in the Seattle press about the videotaped “excessive use of force” assault he endured, put it this way, “How is it possible to get to 400 cases in a row with no discipline?”
Indeed, how is it possible? It must be noted, Tom absolutely oversaw the contracts for
civil claims defense of police officers alleged to have harmed people. During Tom’s tenure, the bill added up
to over $18 million dollars, which all went to one law firm which Tom helped choose. If at any time during those
400 non-disciplined cases there was a turnaround towards implementation of discipline, that would have caused the costs for handling those cases — the billings — to nosedive. Tom prevented that from happening. By the way, Tom’s replacement in Seattle, made it a first order of business to dissolve that highly questionable contract — and guess what? The firm itself has since dissolved.
The question remains, at what point in time did Tom become aware that the city of Seattle was receiving bad publicity for its brutality problems? Was it a year before the election? Could Tom have a rational understanding that he would lose — that in fact, the other side could nominate a doorknob, and he’d probably lose? In other words, what was the nature of Tom’s commitment to having this highly-paid bunch of lawyers defend brutal officers? Did Tom somehow feel that his own personal sense of justice and duty serving the city of Seattle was more significant than the information he was getting from the ever-growing list of injured residents seeking bare compensation or apology for their suffering?
Or did someone pay him to take his election loss with a smile and the “it was a bad year for incumbents” remark?
And how did the city of Boulder manage to hire him, at a pay increase of about $50k per year, without ever discussing
the 2-to-1 margin of loss in the 2009 election, and the brutality issues which always went unresolved and which were
lead stories in the local news, time and again — the hallmark of his term as city attorney?
Rob Smoke is a columnist for Boulder Channel 1. He writes about city of Boulder Politics
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Rob Smoke Treated As Person BY K.C. Becker,
Outstanding Member of Boulder City Council
Okay, the title’s a bit rhetorical. However, at this Tuesday night’s council meeting, KC Becker publicly pledged to return an email from me. Halelujah! Who knows where it could go. We could wind up…friends. Were you thinking shameful thoughts? I wasn’t. I’m not sure KC got the answer she wanted to hear when she asked me, after my three minutes were up, “What would you like council to do?”, but it was easily the most successful exchange I’ve had with a council member over the past two, three years. I said – with somber wit – “if I send you a detailed email, would you commit to responding?” She said, “Yes.” Everyone heard it. Now then, I’m sure she has the ace-in-the-hole so to speak, a complete staff of city attorneys at her disposal to devise a proper response to my email to her.
No doubt that response will include the words “thank you for your email.”
My email to her will – I strongly suspect – ask the question: “If you knew someone being considered for hire for a job with the city of Boulder was involved in human rights violations that caused immense physical and emotional harm to many people, would you hire them?” Is that unfair?
Macon Cowles made his stand perfectly clear to me. He stated that the only proper response to an email submitted by me was a non-response. He stated that as an attorney, having conducted some business with people in the state of Washington, he was personally aware of four or five attorneys practicing civil rights law in the state of Washington who knew of Tom Carr’s work and thought very highly of Tom Carr. He also suggested I was an “outlier”. I’ve been researching “outlier”…I think he meant it in a bad way. Like…I’m someone who just arrived from the land of Newts and Spiders, and everything about me is creepy. Something along those lines. Unfortunately, I used my three minutes to ill effect. I stated that the Department of Justice did an investigation of the civil rights abuse that Seattle’s 400 consecutive “excessive use of force” complaints—without discipline—winds up equaling. I also noted that Tom oversaw the payment of $18 million in fees to a single law firm defending civil claims against the police. (I would have finished that thought – had I more time – by noting that the $18 mil spigot was cut off the moment the new guy replaced Tom – and further, the firm has since dissolved – and further…Tom, acting on behalf of the city of Seattle, was their only client. I would suggest that Tom was – for practical purposes – not just their only client, but the primary reason for their existence. If you implement disciplinary recommendations even occasionally – once in a blue moon – you can argue that you’re doing your job. In that case, the billings for civil complaints should be headed down, not up. If all recommendations from the appropriate board are ignored, yet you have complaints that are as plain as canned spaghetti, complaints that are sometimes verified with videotape – then what excuse is there exactly? In any case, Macon says the allegations are “outlandish” – I’d like to get the quote printed on t-shirts I can give to my friends.
Yeah… “Boulder is separate from Seattle and we’re not in their jurisdiction, nor we theirs” – is what I thought the immediate message from KC Becker would be in essence; however, in fact I thought it was
good of her to publicly commit to returning my email. Just for luck, I sent her a “pre”-mail. Not the email I’d like her to respond to – seriously addressing Tom Carr’s future with Boulder – but a typical semi-informative email just the same. Here’s the text, for people with the patience to wade ever more deeply into dangerous waters: (Keep smiling!)
All:
I want to express thanks to council member KC Becker for committing to responding to an email from me regarding what I would like
council to do regards Tom Carr.
It would be a first for me.
KC…this is NOT that email.
I plan to send the email regarding the issue of what I expect (or would like) council to do (regards Tom Carr) at a later occasion.
I hope to see you stick with your commitment.
Regards the comments from Macon that I am an “outlier” and to the effect that my statements in my emails on Carr are “so outlandish that they can only be ignored…”
I submit the following: 1) For every Seattle attorney that likes Tom Carr, I submit there are two that don’t. 2) Seattle may be in another legal jurisdiction —
the suffering of the “excessive use” complainants is in the jurisdiction of all humanity. 3) I have an interest in seeing law and order
upheld in the city of Boulder by people who have responsibilities they take seriously. One of those responsibilities is to uphold the civil rights of people
subject to ticketing or arrest. My investigation of Tom Carr leads me to believe he did everything within his power to promote the abuse of authority
that the very large number of unanswered “excessive use of force/police misconduct” complaints would obviously imply — to anyone. A complete stranger
hearing the details of what occurred in Seattle would concur with the Justice Dept. — there was no accountability. 4) Question for Macon Cowles: Is
the Federal Justice Department an “outlier” as well? Is the Deputy Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division…an outlier?
5) A police officer inclined to disregard the civil rights of a person being arrested — or just spoken to — may not even exist in Boulder. 6) On the other hand — if they did —
and if they knew that people in city government were going to let him (or her) get away with poor on-the-job behavior, that could seriously
damage the expectations and level of trust felt collectively by city residents towards both police and their city government. My interest in seeing
avoidance of that circumstance is very reasonable. 7) Tom’s behavior –again, based strictly on my investigation — only served to reinforce the bad behavior of
a relatively small percentage of the Seattle police force; however, that bad behavior was immensely destructive to the city of Seattle on many levels.
8) I submit that’s how he lost an election as an incumbent by a two-to-one margin.
I plan to separately submit an email to KC Becker describing an answer to her request — which if I may paraphrase, amounted to “What would you
like council to do?” Obviously, I would like to see Tom Carr dismissed; however, I request the opportunity to submit a report that is fully detailed
and expresses my request from a tangible legal perspective — with a clear basis for moving forward in the direction I suggest. I submit there is only one prudent
and intelligent path to having respect restored to the office of Boulder city attorney, and that would be by reopening the hiring process and releasing
Mr. Carr from his current employment. I plan to continue gathering material and will submit it to KC (at her invite) some time in the future.
I may be an “outlier” to Macon — for those who don’t know, I did serve on the city’s Human Relations Commission. “Outlier” from my perspective, would be a very pejorative term
to use towards someone who had served on a city commission for five years, never missed a meeting and was twice named chair of that commission.
I submit serious allegations about a member of city government with reasonable humility — on the basis that I want to see our city government be the best that it can be.
I’m disappointed to learn members of council aren’t aware of that, or misinterpret my words based on their own set of personal prejudices or dislikes.
Rob Smoke
720-982-2439
Seth is not at all dangerous and has absolutely NO history of danger or violence. Right wingers are afraid of their own shadows. More importantly, they are afraid of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Seattle learned quickly what a frightening person Carr is and was. They did the right thing and gave him the boot. Seattle’s gain is truly Boulder’s loss.
Seattle was a dangerous place with anarchists who tried to killed police during riots. Tom Carr had a thankless job, but he was right to protect the police who protect citizens from radicals.
As for Seth, he has demonstrated that he is dangerous and once again Tom is protecting citizens. I am glad we have him here in Boulder. I lived in Seattle too.
Thanks for the new details. I think there’s lots of perverted blobs of fat like Carr who get off on cops beating people up.