Saturday, April 5, 2014

The shooting: pondering the imponderable


Bizarre incident raises many questions


Commentary by Bryan Tagas

It was a surreal three hours in the otherwise placid life of Madison Park this week:  a cross-dressed sous chef terrorizes customers and employees of the neighborhood Wells Fargo office by staging a holdup with a "realistic looking" airsoft gun; makes off with the cash; races down McGilvra in an underpowered Hyundai, just ahead of converging police; somehow manages to flip his car in Denny Blaine; heads for the bushes while shedding his women's attire; leads police on a multi-hour man hunt; allegedly brandishes a fixed-blade knife when finally accosted; runs threateningly towards a police detective while refusing to drop his weapon; is immediately shot dead ("pop, pop, pop" in the words of a witness).  Not your typical day in the neighborhood.


If you're at a loss to explain how this sequence of events could possibly unfold here, you're not alone. The robbery and shooting are the talk of the town.

First of all, those who believe it was insanity to attempt a bank robbery in Madison Park should know that it has been done before. The fact that the neighborhood is at a the "end of the road" does not mean that it's impossible to make a successful getaway from The Park.  The neighborhood Bank of America branch, back when it was a Seafirst office, was successfully robbed multiple times.  It's a challenge, but not an impossible one.


And then there's the issue of Why?  It's probably impossible to know. The suspect has been identified as Cody Spafford, a dependable, likable four-year employee at the highly-regarded The Walrus & The Carpenter  oyster bar in Ballard.  Although he had a police record, according to media reports, Spafford's criminal history had apparently been limited to several misdemeanors and one case of felony possession of marijuana in Oregon.  Nothing to presage the high-drama, "act of desperation" he graduated to in Madison Park on Thursday. Almost certainly his close friends and family know something that his co-workers quoted in the press may not have known. But in the absence of that personal testimony, Cody's bizarre presence in Madison Park this week is inexplicable.


And what about that final, tragic scene, seemingly straight out of one of those TV cop shows? As summed up by a local TV reporter, it was not the kind of act one expects to play out "in a neighborhood of multi-million dollar homes."  But was it a case of Suicide by Cop?  What possesses a young man to lunge at a rifle-toting police officer other than a desire to end it all?  This is what the SPD police blotter reported about the incident:

"The detective began talking to the suspect and repeatedly ordered him to drop the knife, but the suspect told the detective he would not drop the knife.

As the detective was working to get the suspect to drop the knife, a lieutenant at the scene called for officers with Tasers to respond to the courtyard.

The suspect, brandishing a knife, ran toward the detective. The detective fired multiple rounds from a rifle, striking the suspect. Officers and detectives called for medics and began performing CPR on the suspect. The suspect died at the scene. Although officers armed with additional less-lethal tools were responding to the incident at the time of the shooting, police are trained to use deadly force when facing a threat from a deadly weapon, such as a gun or a knife."

Perhaps it had to end this way, Cody by his actions having removed the authorities' non-lethal options.  A thorough investigation of the shooting and a full reporting of the results will be needed, however, to assuage any lingering doubt.

The homeowner who called police to alert them to Cody's presence on her property adds this postscript: "I have seen the write up on the young man killed.  I am so sorry I was a part of this.  What happened to those tazers the police were issued?"

Too late, too late.

[Photos courtesy of the Seattle Police Department.]

24 comments:

  1. The same detective who was attempting to talk him down off the roof of a detached garge was simultaneously pointing a rifle at him? Having just scaled an adjacent wall to the roof while toting the rifle? And during his conversation with the robber was close enough (on a roof?) to be advanced upon? None of that from the SPD blotter makes any sense whatsoever.

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    1. How big are the garages in your neighborhood? Sounds like you are ready to blame the cops. Pathetic...

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    2. Re "How big are the garages in your neighborhood? Sounds like you are ready to blame the cops. Pathetic..." Actually, my job includes reading police reports all day every day. And this one did not make sense to me from a logistical standpoint for a number of reasons. I look forward to a better accounting from SPD.

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  2. I'm definitely ready to blame the cops. What ever happened to shooting someone in the foot and stepping out of the way? Police can stop people without killing them, particularly when all they have is a knife. This is common sense. As for why the guy robbed a bank, duhh, have you noticed any rage against the 1% lately? What with CEO salaries skyrocketing and the rest of us having our effective incomes frozen for 40 years? My guess is that we will be seeing more incidents like this in the future.

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    1. Actually their training is shoot to kill if someone is a lethal threat to you. Aim for the center of mass and fire.

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  3. Imagine it is your back yard and there are young children in your house. The police report from the bank robbery, which includes pictures, shows the suspect armed with a gun. Based on what I have read, the detective deserves a medal for protecting the community from a dangerous felon.

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    1. The person you are branding as a 'dangerous felon' did not have a real gun, had a knife, and could have been stopped without killing him. He almost certainly was mentally disturbed. Stop with the pad nonsense that police have to kill people to protect our communities. Better police training could prevent these killings.

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    2. Is this your community? We'll show up at your house with a few guns (some of them fake) and point them at your head....then ask you to tell us about the 1%. get a clue!

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  4. How did they know it was not a real gun? Have you ever had a gun stuck in your face in a robbery, I have. Imagine how that feels, do you know at that time if it is real or not? Do the police know? Do you care at the time about this persons history? You need to live. I worked in a restaurant on Capital Hill paying for college and a robber came in and stuck a sawed off shot gun in my face demanding money. He got it. Live that in your head and believe what the Seattle Police did in this situation was best for the people in our community. All prayers go to the families of the deceased, he picked his path and suffered his fate.

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  5. So this guy is the victim? Points a gun at the teller, flips his car, hides out in the neighborhood with knives and (now we know) a fake gun. Refuses to follow simple instructions....
    What if it was your wife working in the bank? What if your kids were walking down the sidewalk that he crashed on? What if he was pointing the knife at you? He's an armed robber! Too bad someone had to die, but that's what happens when you rob banks. Yeah for the SPD!

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    1. What if it was your son who was shot because the cop who confronted him didn't have the proper equipment to resolve the issue in the manner he knew it should be resolved?

      THIRD shooting for this officer. I am guessing that's a very high number.

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    2. I think the young man that was shot is the same one that robbed the bank at gunpoint. He set it in motion.

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    3. Fortunately, the SPD does not look at someone's criminal history when deciding to shoot them, or not. Yeah, the guy robbed the bank, but the confrontation two hours later, in the next neighborhood over is a completely separate set of circumstances.

      At that point, law enforcement was involved, one on one with him. The public was not in danger. Maybe the officer was, maybe he wasn't. but that's all that matters at that point. They don't get to say, "Well, he robbed a bank a couple of hours ago, so I can go ahead and shoot him." Doesn't work that way.

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    4. Actually it DID work that way. And as it turns out, it's the same guy that stuck a gun in the tellers face and then terrorized the neighborhood for 2 1/2 hours. Go SPD!

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  6. Sounds like the cop knew how the situation should end, with the taser he didn't have, and had to resort to other means instead. You don't have to shoot a guy armed with a steak knife, and the cop knew it, but he did it anyway because he was ill-prepared to do his job.

    The SPD problem with use of excessive force is well-documented and this sounds like more of the same.

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    1. I seriously doubt the cop did not have a taser on his hip. They didn't have the bean bag rounds on scene yet, but I'll bet money that this officer, on his 3rd shooting, had the standard issue taser on his hip. Their training though is not necessarily to tase someone advancing with a knife. (That said, the whole scenario from a spatial reasoning perspective is off. I'd like to see a better accounting by SPD as the blotter report was flawed and meant simply to establish justification to shoot.)

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  7. Put yourself in their place you idiots. If that loser was in my backyard I would have ended it. Are you sending these messages in your mothers basement. Grow up.

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    1. Grown up people try to solve problems by non-violent means. You have some nerve telling people to grow up. Look in the mirror and ask yourself if resorting to gun violence is a real and lasting solution please.

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    2. I always enjoy being told to grow up by someone who has to resort to name-calling to get their point across.

      Thanks for the chuckle.

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  8. I have a son, and if he did this and was killed I would be devastated for everyone involved. I would not blame the SPD, I would blame myself for missing something in my job as a father. I feel for the for the police officer who had to do his job and live with this. He also may have children. Can you believe how he feels? HE IS A HERO. Nobody wins here.

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    1. I certainly agree with you that no one is a winner here, and also that the police officer is a human being and a great citizen. The point I'm trying to make as has a federal investigation of the Seattle police, is that better training could help prevent the killings, which helps everyone involved.

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    2. Bingo. AND better preparation. The cop knew all he needed was a taser, but he didn't have one, so he had to call his partner to bring one. In the meantime, well.......

      Lives changed and lives lost all for the lack of a $200.00 piece of equipment. THAT is a tragedy.

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    3. Re "I have a son." "He is a HERO." Would you feel the same way knowing that this is the officer's THIRD shooting in 13 years? That's an insanely high stat for this leo. De-escalation is taught, just not often used by SPD.

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  9. I am really troubled here. As a long-time Madison Park resident we have seen many bank robberies. Remember the "Hollywood Robber", committed suicide in a trailer in Ravenna. This young man was clearly asking for help at some point in his short life. I saw his picture, he served me some great oysters at the restaurant where he worked in Ballard. Smiling and a nice guy. Not blaming SPD, feel for them as well. Just very tragic.

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