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Trial over police officer's suit ends in hung jury
Thursday, February 10, 2000
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF
A mistrial was declared today in the case of a former Seattle police officer who sued the department for wrongful termination.
Former Officer Paul Vang, 35, claimed he was pressured to lie to internal-affairs investigators after witnessing officers beating a black teenager in a holding cell in September 1996.
Jurors deliberated five days after a three-month trial. The split was: six jurors in favor of the city and three in favor of Vang; two jurors abstained.
Last month, police Chief Norm Stamper testified that he had serious reservations about the stability of Vang, an officer trainee.
"I was convinced, based on the information I had, that he had exhibited severe emotional instability," Stamper said then.
Vang, now an officer in Appleton, Wis., said he was forced to quit when he refused to help cover up the beating.
City attorneys said Vang waited to report his concerns about the incident until after he received poor marks for a number of required policing exercises.
The alleged beating occurred while Vang was writing reports one night in the department's West Precinct.
The trainee said he heard a scuffle break out in a nearby holding cell. When he ran over, he said he saw three officers punching and kicking 17-year-old Demetrius Fisher, who was lying motionless and bloody on the ground.
The officers said Fisher threw a punch at one of them and it took three of them to restrain him. Fisher wound up being convicted of assault.
Attorneys for the city tried to portray Vang as a struggling trainee overwhelmed by the stress of police work and the responsibility of being the department's first officer of Hmong descent.
Scott Blankenship, Vang's attorney, pointed to the case of a police officer who, frustrated by his workload, threatened to "go postal" in an internal computer message.
Another officer, who was later fired, took out his service weapon and brandished it in a threatening manner while on the job, Blankenship said.
Stamper conceded the incidents. But neither rose to the level of what Vang did, he said in last month's testimony.
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