If you want to make a Seattle cop mad, just ask him to do his job. That’s what a Safeway employee did last year, and Officer Michael Griffin threatened not to show up at all next time.
Griffin responded to a shoplifting call at a Safeway in South Seattle. He identified and released the two accused shoplifters, verbally trespassing each and documenting the contact. When a loss prevention manager requested that he give them a written warning, Griffin refused, insisting what he did was enough.
A security guard then asked to speak with Griffin’s supervisor, and he became visibly upset. Griffin shut his bodycamera off and told him: “You are wasting resources. You don’t wanna go down this route. We do a lot for this store. If you go down this route, we won’t be showing up anymore.”
Griffin admitted that he said something to the effect of, “If this is the way officers are going to be treated, they’re not going to answer up to these calls.” But he claimed that he muttered those words to himself as he walked back to his cruiser. Griffin insisted that they were just said out of frustration and weren’t meant literally.
However, three witnesses heard him say it. They all corroborated each other’s accounts and interpreted the statement as a threat. The security guard told the Office of Police Accountability that Griffin’s words and demeanor made him think, “Whoa…that was a threat. That was crazy.”
He felt that Griffin was trying to “intimidate” him. Another guard said Griffin was “really mean” to his coworker.
Ultimately, Griffin did request a supervisor and later returned to the store to apologize. Still, the Safeway employees were disturbed enough by the interaction to report him to the OPA.
In his interview, Griffin told the OPA that he was assigned to a “proactive” unit. He said the “proactive” unit was supposed to “sit out in front of places to deter shoplifting” but not “actually do shoplift paperwork.” Rainier Valley Square, where the Safeway is located, remains a hotspot for shoplifting despite the fact that officers spend hundreds of hours posted up outside annually.
He said he only took the call because no other units were available. Griffin claimed that he was “frustrated” because he “volunteered” to take the call, and he was being treated “like crap.” The OPA pointed out that Griffin was “not a volunteer; he was fulfilling his basic job functions.”
The OPA sustained allegations that Griffin retaliated against the security guard and violated the department’s camera policy. It recommended a suspension of seven to 10 days. Interim Chief Andre Sayles imposed much lighter discipline: two days.
Griffin was previously suspended twice for failing to respond adequately to domestic violence calls. One was a call about a father threatening a woman and her child. Griffin and his partner took 21 minutes to arrive, and when they couldn’t get in, they just left and had dinner. Coincidentally, when he started that call, he was parked at the same Safeway.
In a similar call a month later, Griffin and his partner responded to a DV assault where a man assaulted and bit the mother of his 18-month-old child. The man, who was drunk and subject to a no-contact order, took the girl and drove off.
The officers’ supervisor said the call merited a much wider response, including area checks by multiple officers and possibly an Amber Alert. Instead, Griffin and the other officer parked at the Safeway and cleared the call. How proactive.
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