Suspensions for cops who waited at SPOG HQ while man was shot a mile away
Suspensions for cops who waited at SPOG HQ while man was shot a mile away
Officers who took 23 minutes to respond to the shooting call could not explain what they were doing.
Two Seattle Police officers were suspended for waiting 22 minutes to respond to a shooting in SODO, according to a report released at the end of January. Though they told dispatch they were en route, Officers Clark Dickson, Jason Atofau, and student officer Torian Koonce waited idly at the Seattle Police Officer Guild headquarters while a man was bleeding from a gunshot wound a mile away.
In December 2022 at 1:26 a.m., a 911 call came in about a shooting at the Showbox SODO. The nightclub was put on lockdown while the security staff sheltered the clubgoers in place. Dickson, Atofau, and Koonce marked themselves as “en route” to the call at 1:27 a.m.
Dickson and Atofau told dispatch not to send any other officers, claiming they would “take care of it.” GPS data shows that the officers’ vehicles stayed in place for the next 22 minutes, finally leaving at 1:49 a.m. and arriving at the scene at 1:50 a.m. 23 minutes after the shooting.
In their investigation, OPA noted that the nightclub was only about a mile, or a four-minute drive, from the SPOG building. The suspects were able to flee, and when the officers arrived, they did not find any evidence. Atofau logged a remark, “Everything looked fine. No one flagged us down.”
Around two hours later, the victim of the shooting arrived at Harborview Medical Center with an injury to his arm.
OPA investigators sought to understand what could cause a 22-minute delay on a priority one call—the highest priority call officers respond to.
Dickson told OPA that he uses his own judgment when he decides how quickly to respond to even priority one calls. Dickson said that the “exigency of responding kind of declines.” He said to investigators, “There’s a level of priority. I have learned how exigent a call is.” He continues, “[evidence] would still be there, present, whatever I took twenty minutes, five minutes, or an hour.”
The OPA called this explanation “unacceptable,” elaborating that “witnesses and suspects could have left, and physical evidence, like shell casings, could have been lost.”
During Atofau’s interview, he claimed that his normal response to a call like this is “Drop the meal, drop the report, and go.” Atofau had no answer as to why he did not do exactly as he said for this call.
None of the officers interviewed could account for what they did in the SPOG building for 22 minutes before leaving. Dickson stonewalled OPA, saying, “I don't remember what I was doing. I don’t remember what [Atofau] was doing. I don’t remember what my student was doing.” Atofau also claimed not to recall what happened to cause the delay but said that he was likely using the restroom or eating a meal.
Koonce is the only one who seemed to have remorse about the delay. In his interview Koonce said, “Makes me feel like we dropped the ball. We should have done more. Doesn’t make me feel good… lives could have been more in danger than they were.”
Dickson and Atofau both have histories of suspensions. Dickson was suspended for punching a homeless man in the face because he spat on the ground near him. Atofau was suspended for firing an AirSoft gun inside his cruiser and failing to report the damage.
In 2022, Dickson made $211,000, including $79,000 in overtime. Atofau made $315,000, with $182,000 in overtime.