Tran's phobia: Sham OPA Probe Into Influencer Cop's Bigoted Posts is 'Inconclusive'
DivestSPD exposed transphobic jokes by Ofc. Chris Brownlee posted under the name "Chris Tran." OPA claimed it couldn't "authenticate" Brownlee as the author.
Our work can be frustrating. When reading case summaries about disciplinary investigations, we often have gnawing suspicions about dodgy OPA findings and OIG certifications that don’t pass the smell test, but we’re rarely in a position to catch them in a lie.
The info in these reports is limited and selective. Given the glacial pace of SPD’s public records process, it might be months or years before we get the stuff we need to poke holes in the official narrative.
Last week, the Office of Police Accountability gave us a belated Christmas present by looking into one of our threads. On Friday, they released a summary of their purported investigation into a Twitter thread we posted back in June 2022 about two transphobic posts on Facebook and Instagram made by Ofc. Christopher Brownlee under the name “Chris Tran.”
Chris Tran is the alias Brownlee uses to blog about tactical gear and hawk pre-made fitness meals in his side hustle as a cop influencer. OPA claimed it could not locate the social media accounts referenced in the thread.
This is a brazen, easily disprovable lie.
The Office of Police Absolution
Either the OPA detective didn’t attempt to locate the accounts and falsely reported that they did, or they found them and said they didn’t.
If they were earnestly searching for a social media account, the first logical thing to do is use the built-in search engine. If one enters “Chris Tran” into the Instagram search, Brownlee’s account “christranfiveoh” is the second result on a relatively short list.
Doing the same search on Facebook is only slightly more difficult. There are more Chris Trans on Facebook, but it only takes a few seconds of scrolling to locate the account referenced in our Twitter post because the profile pic is still the same.
It’s a black-and-white photo of Brownlee in his SPD-issued vest. If you zoom in on this hi-def image, you can see the letters “-LEE” on his nametag, partially obscured by his hand. He has a Bible verse tattooed across both of his forearms, which can be seen in this still we pulled from BWV of Brownlee at the SPOG Labor Day demo:
You don’t even need to match up the tattoos. “Chris Tran” shows his face on hundreds of posts and videos on both accounts because creating a persona is part of being an influencer.
Online, Brownlee gets to live out his fantasies of being a SWAT tough guy through his alter ego Chris Tran. Until very recently, he was inspecting clubs for code violations. Not exactly Steven Segal shit.
Explaining its findings, OPA acknowledged that the posts degrade trans people but lamented that it was “unable to authenticate [Brownlee] as either account holder. Moreover, OPA was unable to locate the original posts.”
The OPA detective could’ve done so in a matter of minutes by comparing photos of “Chris Tran” on his Instagram or Facebook with Brownlee’s staff portrait or any of the several pictures of him in SPD uniform online:
They didn’t even need to look for a photo because our thread included a picture of Brownlee from one of his blogs and a link. OPA even mentions this image in the report:
The photo shows the subject’s right side. The link led to a blog post authored by someone with the same name as the Instagram and Facebook accountholders in question.
OPA was provided with an image of Brownlee that connected to a blog written by a person using the name “Chris Tran,” containing identifiable images of him.
If you search “Chris Tran tactical” in Google, you get his Insta and articles he wrote in several blogs. Click the “image” tab, and you will see multiple clear front-facing photos of Brownlee.
With barely any effort—less than a minute of searching—the OPA detective could’ve authenticated Brownlee as the owner of both accounts.
What about the posts? The Instagram one is still up. The date is visible in the screencap. You can find it here. We had difficulty locating the Facebook post again because we only captured the comment section, which cannot be searched using the platform’s tools. It was posted in 2017 or thereabouts.
The part of the OPA report about the investigator’s inability to locate contact information for DivestSPD also rings false.
Our DMs are open to everyone, and we regularly check for messages from low-quality accounts that get filtered out. If OPA wanted to contact us directly, they could’ve found a way. SPOG’s lawyer found our email to serve us with a litigation notice. Are highly paid SPD detectives more incompetent than your average process server?
Of course, it’s irrelevant. OPA could’ve confirmed our claims without our help if they had tried. Obviously, they did not. At all.
Certifiably Useless
In addition to looking at his face, tattoos, and this post where “Tran” describes a lawsuit that happened to Brownlee, OPA had another foolproof means of verifying Brownlee as the owner of the two accounts: asking him.
OPA never interviewed Brownlee because the Office of the Inspector General certified the investigation as “Expedited,” meaning they believed they had enough evidence to reach a finding without interviewing the named employee.
In a manner of speaking, they did have enough evidence to reach a finding—sustained — without talking to Brownlee. His face was all over the accounts that made the posts. Yet, OPA inexplicably concluded that they couldn’t verify his identity.
If that’s true, then a full investigation was absolutely necessary. “Expedited” means they don’t expect to find out anything by interviewing employees that they don’t already know. In similar cases involving pseudonymous social media posts, like that of Andrei Constantin, they’ve asked the officer point blank if they authored the posts. They usually fess up.
Similar to being under oath, Brownlee would feel pressure to tell the truth because the presumed penalty for a finding of dishonesty under the police union CBA is termination and decertification. Also, the evidence is overwhelmingly against him.
The OIG typically certifies a case as “expedited” when investigators can resolve all controversies of fact by reviewing bodycams, reports, in-car or third-party video, and other evidence available after the intake stage.
We contacted civil rights attorney and former OIG employee Sarah Lippek, who said that OPA cases are typically only given “expedited” status if the employee can be exonerated with the available evidence. The vast majority of expedited cases end in “unfounded” or “lawful and proper” findings.
Expedited cases with “inconclusive” findings are exceedingly rare. Between 2014 to the present date, OIG certified more than 1,000 expedited cases. Only 10 were “inconclusive,” and six of those were cases where the officer couldn’t be identified.
Lippek said bias allegations must be investigated and cannot be classified as contact logs. But OPA’s investigation was so deficient that it can hardly be called an investigation at all.
While employed by OIG, Lippek often observed behavior like this by OPA detectives. Detectives would call a complainant or witness once or twice and sometimes not leave a message, then deem them unreachable, Lippek said.
For example, in 2021, when Ofc. Benjamin Stanford became the subject of a level-three DV protection order, signifying extreme risk of violence, the OPA called the petitioner once and wrote a letter to her last known address.
OPA did not attempt to contact her through her lawyer listed on the petition or by any other means. They contacted no other witnesses, though several filed declarations in support of her. None of those witness statements were reviewed or included in the report. Stanford’s testimony was the only version of events heard, and OPA issued an inconclusive finding.
The OPA and OIG were ostensibly created to add layers of accountability and independent oversight to the disciplinary process. Instead, they comprise pieces of a bureaucratic shell game that obscures an inescapable reality. The status quo vis-a-vis officer discipline that existed before the consent decree remains largely intact.
The existence of a civilian director and OIG doesn’t mean much if they’re just rubber-stamping investigations with little actual oversight over the sworn detectives’ activities. At the end of the day, police discipline at SPD is still very much a case of cops policing cops.
Any chance of getting a local reporter on this? The Stranger or KUOW maybe?