‘It’s egregious’: Seattle officers spark controversy after delayed shooting response

SEATTLE — We learned today that it took two Seattle Police officers over 20 minutes to respond to the scene of a shooting where someone was shot.

Further investigation showed one of the officers caught on dashcam punching a homeless man so hard he knocked him to the ground.  It’s another troubling revelation for a department under intense scrutiny for over a decade.

The shooting at the center of the latest Office of Police Accountability report happened at the Showbox SODO, on Dec.18, 2022.  The officers Clark Dickson and Jason Atofau were at the Seattle Police Officers Guild when that shooting call came in at 1:26 am.  The OPA report found it took them 23 minutes between the officers saying they were responding and actually arriving to the Showbox. That report also shows the shooting call is a “priority one” call.

“It’s egregious,” said the Chair of the African American Community Advisory Council, Donna Kelly. “With there being such a high risk of additional deaths and that shooter still being on the loose.”

“The fact that evidence could have been moved around or lost,” she continued.

At 1:27 a.m., the report found, the officers said they were “en route” but GPS showed their cars stationary at the Seattle Police Officers Guild. The report found GPS doesn’t show the squads moving until 1:49 a.m., with the officers arriving at the Showbox SODO at 1:51 a.m.

The report shows a caller even said they saw a muzzle flash and saw someone bloodied and running after the shooting.

When the OPA questioned one of the officers as to why, the officer responded by saying:

NE#1 “If I recall right, the complainant just saw a flash of a gun, and then he saw something that looked like blood. And in my seventeen years of patrol work, generally, when I get that information, for me, the exigency of responding kind of declines, even though it is categorized as a priority one.

“When to respond to an emergency call should not be left up to the officers,” said Kelly. “Just a one-day suspension for the possibility of life placed in danger.”

Both Officers Dickson and Atofau received a one-day suspension for the delayed response. The OPA recommended up to three days.

Officer Dickson was also at the center of a 2015 lawsuit after a dashcam caught footage of him punching a homeless man after the man spit on the ground.

The night of the Showbox SODO shooting, 1,100 people were inside the venue.  An officer in training also was with one of the officers.

That officer acted as a witness in the investigation. During their questioning, they said:

Makes me feel like we dropped the ball. We should have done more. Doesn’t make me feel good, because lives could have been more in danger than they were.

Donna Kelly says that an officer in training speaking up is why she still has hope for the future of SPD.

“We can kind of see there’s a change in the officers that are now being deployed on the streets so that’s the positive part of it,” said Kelly.

KIRO 7 reached out to SPD but was told no one was available for comment.

They also said a Public Disclosure Request was needed for KIRO 7 to learn if those suspensions had been served. Divest SPD aided with this story by providing their PDR form naming the

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