Homeless Man Says Off-Duty SPD Officer Pointed Gun, Threatened to 'Slaughter' Him
Tukwila PD surveillance footage appears to partially corroborate the man's account.
SPD Officer Oriane McKenzie is being investigated for allegedly threatening a homeless man outside the Tukwila Police Department headquarters last November, according to records from the Office of Police Accountability.
McKenzie showed up at the TPD station just before midnight on Nov. 11, 2022, with a group of friends in two pickup trucks to ask if Tukwila police would allow them to park inside the secure lot.
He entered the lobby and told the staff that his tires were slashed outside his parents’ house just up the hill on Military Road in SeaTac. He was hoping they would allow him to park inside as a professional courtesy.
Though McKenzie showed his SPD badge, the staff thought “something didn’t feel right,” so they contacted Sgt. Joshua Vivet, the supervisor on duty.
Vivet was wary of a person showing up in the middle of the night claiming to be a police officer and seeking access to the secure parking lot. He cited recent security incidents in which a car had rammed their gates.
He and the other TPD officers also had doubts about McKenzie’s credentials because they had never seen a Seattle police ID, and it had no signatures from the mayor or chief like a Tukwila police ID card.
McKenzie told officers that he believed his parents’ neighbors did it. (Note: According to public records, McKenzie is originally from Florida. He moved to Kent when he joined SPD in 2021, and we couldn’t find any relatives in the Northwest.)
Sgt. Vivet recommended filing a police report with the King County Sheriff’s Office, but McKenzie declined, saying that it was “a waste of time.”
The TPD officers remarked on how odd this was. Vivet wrote in his report that McKenzie’s story wasn’t “adding up.”
Ofc. Dustin Johnson wrote, “I found that incredibly strange as a police officer, as I wouldn't know of many other police officers that wouldn't want damage to their vehicles with an allegedly known suspect not to be investigated.”
Vivet told McKenzie that he would allow him to park inside if he could get verification from McKenzie’s supervisor. Visibly frustrated, McKenzie would not wait for confirmation.
Johnson also thought this didn’t make sense: “He and his friends then drove the trucks, back to the exact spot up the street he stated it happened at, completely contradicting his wish to park his vehicle safe [sic] in our lot, away from where it was damaged by the known suspect.”
At around 12:30 a.m., TPD got a 911 call from a man who claimed he was being threatened outside the station gate.
The man said the two trucks followed him from Rainier and were accusing him of slashing their tires, so he drove to the police station for safety. He said the man in the “army jacket” (McKenzie) banged on his window, brandished a “small, dark-colored handgun,” and threatened to “slaughter” him.
TPD verified that McKenzie was armed with a black Glock 17 holstered on his right hip. They didn’t do much investigating aside from asking McKenzie about the man’s claims. McKenzie said that he didn’t know who the guy was but had seen him driving around “suspiciously.” The officers then sent both men on their way.
Later in November, OPA investigators followed up on the incident. OPA Detective Derek Ristau contacted the man’s sister, who said he was living in his car and had no fixed address.
Ristau ultimately found a working number for the man and interviewed him, gaining more details that TPD missed, including the precise route the man took from South Seattle to Tukwila.
The man said the trucks chasing him attempted to block his path, and one of them fired a gun in the air near the immigration office on Tukwila International Blvd. At the time of writing, OPA still had not obtained video from the immigration office and other locations along the route.
Det. Ristau reviewed the security footage from Tukwila PD. The camera is a great distance away from McKenzie, but Ristau’s notes describe him “reaching towards his waistband, then pointing a dark object in the direction of [the man’s] parked vehicle.”
Per procedure, OPA referred the case back to Tukwila for criminal investigation. TPD’s detectives claimed they could not establish probable cause, citing a lack of solid video evidence, so they closed the case.
This incident is being investigated under case No. 2022OPA-0385. It has a due date of July 14. McKenzie has another active “Conformance to Law” investigation (2022OPA-0427) stemming from an incident that occurred in December.