I recently finished my five days on a work crew sentencing I received from an Olympia Municipal Court. My crime: copwatching or as the prosecution put it "obstructing an officer." I plead guilty to observing Officer Costello and Officer Bakala in downtown Olympia and refusing to move where Officer Costello asked me to because I felt his request would infringe on my legal right to observe him and Officer Costello Bakala in the course of their duties.

People who know the history of Officer Costello and Officer Bakala understand the need for citizens to watch both men. Later that same day I saw them questioning people in a car they had pulled over. Witnesses on the street said that they saw both officers draw their guns when the driver of the vehicle, acting nervous but showing no signs of threatening behavior toward the police or other people in the car, refused to roll down his window to talk to the police. The officers made everyone get out of the car and left the car's lights on. People on the scene mentioned several times to the officers that they had left the vehicles lights on, but the officers continued to ignore them until Costello yelled at one homeless person that if he tried to turn off the lights he would be shocked with electrity. After the people who were pulled over were booked and came back to their car they found the battery completely drained and the car dead. I asked about the lights, and they told me a person could just turn them off with the switch like any other vehicle.

Later that month I saw both officers in the Sylvester Park talking to some kids and stopped to watch them again. I arrived at the very end of the episode and could not piece together what happened. There was a young woman who was sitting down and crying. At one point Officer Bakala stood over the women and screamed down. The women continued to cry and the officer walked away. Officer Bakala also was involved in the tasering of 59-year-old man Stephen Edwards outside of Bayview Thirftway. The Thurston County Sheriff's department recently found the officer not guilty of any wrong doing, but one witness who saw the incident claims that Officer Bakala punched Edwards several times in the face while he laid on the ground after being hit with a taser. Homeless, street people, and activist have given similar accounts of Bakala's and Costello's extremely aggressive and disrespectful character. Their record of misconduct, though not officially reported for fear of retaliation, is long and frustrating.

The usually sentence for being charged with obstruction while passively observing an officer from a distance is a $400 fine and a requirement that the convict has a year without any other offensives. When I stepped into the courtroom, the public defender and I were shocked to find that I was being charged with 10 days in jail. When the public defender asked the prosecuting attorney why I was being charged with such an outrageous sentence, the prosecuting attorney replied "it's the new things,"(as if a sentencing was a certain fashion). He then proceeded to describe how there were too many officers in the downtown complaining about people obstructing them and how the officers felt it was a risk to their safety. With a prosecutor ready to pounce and a public defender not that eager to fight the charge, I was not presented with many options. I could either plead guilty and take the ten days or go to trial and risk 90 days in jail and all the court cost. After brooding on the situation for about as long as I could, I decided to take the ten days of jail and get it over with. The judge end-up reducing my sentence to 5-days of jail with options, after the public defender commented on the excessiveness of the sentencing and called me stupid in front of the judge for what I had done. After the whole affair was done with, it came quite clear to me that some of the forces that run Olympia justice system have decided it was time to clamp down on people who wish to exercise their legal right to observe officers in the course of their duties. Cop watching had become a "problem."

I did not realize the full extent to how afraid the Olympia Police Department is with citizens advocating for police accountability and citizen in-put until the night of the police accountability march on November 26th. The day before the march I was walking in downtown Olympia and noticed that a flier advertising the march that was hung-up on the store window of Dumpster Values/Phantom City was no longer there. I had seen the flier there a few days ago, and now there were only pieces of scotch tape where the flier remained. The flier on the window of Dumpster Values/Phantom City would not the only one that was missing. Hours before I noticed the missing flier, I went to the Java Flow to hang-up a sign that announced the starting point of the march had been moved to Bread and Roses and would not be at the Devil's Ordinary (which was the business the Java Flow turned into during the night). The owner of the Java Flow told me it was perfectly all right to hang-up a sign on his door that said the march had been moved. The next day, right before the march once suppose to leave from Bread and Roses and move to Bayview Thirftway, I discovered that my posting had been removed from his door.

The police presence during the march was unbelievably large. Around thirty people left from Bread and Roses and marched to Bayview Thirftway on the sidewalk. Throughout the night it was estimated that around 12-15 police officers involved themselves in our march, including one plains-clothes officer who video taped our march, officer Anthony Rios who assaulted a Works In Progress reporter, and two bike officers who followed one of the participants through downtown Olympia before the march even began. At one point during the march one person joked, "The people looked confused. Our signs say stop the police, but that is all they see."

After the march it was discovered that another flier advertising the march was probably torn down before the march had taken place. At the Olympia Copwatch meeting later in the week, it was discussed how Kevin Storman, the owner of Bayview Thriftway, admitted that he did not want members of Olympia Copwatch talking to his employees about what happened to Stephen Edwards, and the OPD had told people that they couldn't talk to anyone about what they saw even though they legally can.

All this subtle repression by those who fear Olympia being a place where civil liberties are protected, policing is done democratically with community in-put, and those who enforce laws are required to treat all people with respect and dignity, is intended to make advocates for police accountability afraid, isolated, and powerless. The undertone of all these acts of sabotage, excessive punishment, and lying is telling involved people to be quiet or get ready for the state to give you a good ass kicking; that the cops will start arresting and harassing people even more. This type of behavior reminds me of a very enlightening quote by Mahatmas Gandhi. When discussing how people in power tend to react to popular movements, Gandhi said, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Perhaps someone should call Police Chief Gary Michaels and the rest of the OPD and remind them that they can't be bullies and liars to Olympians looking for truth and justice forever.