Bad Apple Baseball Cards: Lt. Michael Tietjen
Tietjen racked up the most complaints in the 2020 protests, including one for trying to hit protesters on the sidewalk with his SUV. SPD rewarded him with a promotion.
If you’d like to get your very own pack of our Bad Apples Baseball Cards, we’re planning our first print run later in the summer. Sign up below!
After he made headlines in 2007, Michael Tietjen was reassigned to the Harbor Patrol, where the Seattle Police Department stashes its problem officers. In the past, this has included cops who embarrassed the department by killing three people, drunkenly drag racing on I-5, or bum-rushing a schizophrenic man with a police dog.
Following a familiar pattern, Tietjen was quietly rehabilitated and put back on the street at a sergeant’s rank in 2016. Four years later, he was back in the news again for trying to run down protesters on the sidewalk during the 2020 George Floyd uprising.
Though the police chief ostensibly handed him a disciplinary transfer over this incident — a punishment just short of demotion — Tietjen was promoted to watch lieutenant just a few months later. He’s now responsible for reviewing roughly a third of force, stops, and arrests in the North Precinct.
Let’s look at some of his most significant incidents.
2007 Accused of Planting Drugs
Lt. Tietjen and his then partner, Greg Neubert, who had previously made headlines for multiple shootings and police brutality incidents, stopped a wheelchair-bound Black Man near Pike Street and Second Avenue. The man, George Patterson, alleged that Neubert planted the drugs on his hoodie.
The video of the arrest, captured by a Walgreens security cam, shows Nuebert choke Patterson out for four minutes, unsuccessfully trying to get him to cough up drugs, as Tietjen places Patterson’s arm in an armbar.
A forensic expert who reviewed the evidence noted that the times on the video don’t match the timeline officers reported. Also, several moments in the arrest weren’t documented in the report.
The officers claimed they found crumbs of crack in Patterson’s lap and waist area, but the video does not show this. The video does show Neubert ride off on his bike and return, then start fumbling around with the Patterson’s hood.
The Chief at the time, Gil Kerlikowske, exonerated the two officers in a press statement, a month before the OPA investigation, headed by a Seattle police captain at the time, also did not sustain the allegations
Nevertheless, Tietjen was transferred to Harbor Patrol, where he remained for over a decade.
2020 Transphobia and Unprofessionalism
Tietjen was in an unmarked SUV with other officers looking for someone who allegedly threw rocks at the East Precinct.
They rolled up on a trans woman who was walking nearby and began taking pictures of her.
The driving officer allegedly called out to her asking if she “had a dick under,” her skirt. When she asked him if he wanted to see it, he claimed he would “need a microscope” to see it.
Tietjen was the acting sergeant in the SUV during this exchange and failed to speak out or stop the transphobic officer from harassing the woman.
OPA issued a written reprimand for Tietjens' failure to act and report the other officer’s behavior.
The transphobic officer resigned before they were disciplined.
2020 Violent Push on 7/25
On July 25, 2020, SPD’s most violent day of the 2020 protests, Tietjen and other officers came across several protestors leaning against a small retaining wall, treating someone with pepper spray in their eyes.
As a protester tried to help the other protester, Tietjen shoved him down into a bus stop, causing him to hit his head against the stop. Another officer then doused him with pepper spray.
Tietjen later lied to the OPA investigators, saying he was “spin[ning] him around” to “get him walking.” This was contradicted by the body-worn video above, which shows that Tietjen grabbed the protester and forcefully pushed them to the ground.
Tietjen was suspended without pay for this incident
2020 Attempt to Run Over Protesters
Commanding a team in an SUV patrolling around Cal Anderson Park, Tietjen drove up on a sidewalk full of protesters, causing them to flee through the bushes.
He mocked them, saying they fled like “cockroaches.” When the person filming him asked him why he continued working at SPD if he hated the city so much, he said it was because he got paid “200 grand a year to babysit you people.”
Tietjen and the other officers claimed they were attempting to arrest someone for shining a flashlight into their vehicle (note: this is not a crime), so they drove onto the sidewalk to get as close as possible to the person they were trying to arrest.
SPD’s Traffic Collision Investigation Squad investigated the incident, but the SUV had no in-car video, and they couldn’t determine from the cellphone video whether the officers came close to striking anyone.
Based on that investigation, the Seattle City Attorney declined charges. Tietjen was suspended without pay for unprofessionalism and violating SPD’s vehicle policy but not for breaking the law.