SEATTLE — As she lay in a hospital bed with brain trauma, a fractured neck, and a partially severed right ear, Stephanie Deyo figured Seattle police would surely be working to figure out who knocked her unconscious from behind while she walked home alone from a North Seattle bar.
“I wondered, ‘Why aren’t they coming to talk to me? Who did this?’” she said. “‘Where are they?’”
Soon, Deyo found out that police officers who responded to the 911 call were not investigating her assault case at all. There was no official report, there was no search for surveillance, and whoever slammed a hard object into the back of her head would not be pursued.
Deyo was left with questions nearly as painful as the disfiguring injuries she suffered.
“What made my life less worthy for them not to serve and protect me? I was at my weakest moment,” she said.
Deyo requested and received the video from a Seattle police officer’s body camera from the night of Oct. 21, 2019. The video shows her on the pavement, bleeding profusely from a head wound. A neighbor found her motionless on the pavement, only steps from her Roosevelt Way NE apartment. He called 911.
Deyo had been walking home from the Pinehurst Pub, where she admits she drank too much. She has no memory of being approached or encountering anyone as she returned to her apartment. Someone hit Deyo from behind so hard, her lower right ear was nearly cut off. She had a six-inch gash in the back of her head.
“Do you know what you got hit with?” asked the officer who responded to the call. In the video, the officer is seen finding Stephanie’s ID and asking her very few questions.
“Are you taking medications? Where have you been?” he asked. “You’re saying you’re trying to get home but you’ve got to tell us what happened,” the officer said.
“I’m crying out in pain in these videos,” Deyo said. “I had no memory of anything.”
The officer is seen telling Deyo’s boyfriend what happened to her, but he asked no probing questions, and did not check the man for previous domestic violence records. The video then shows the officer telling people outside the bar she had been injured and was on her way to the hospital, but records show the officer never looked for nearby surveillance video, never filed a report, and closed the case in less than 19 minutes.
Deyo filed a complaint, asking why the officer never investigated her assault.
“You’re ordered to serve and protect, you take an oath just like a doctor takes an oath,” she said.
The Office of Professional Accountability agreed with Stephanie finding that the officer, “failed to adequately investigate the assault perpetrated against her” and “abused his discretion,” adding, “This is simply inconsistent with the department’s expectations of his conduct,” according to investigative documents obtained by KIRO 7 News.
The officer, who Deyo was told left the Seattle Police Department for another job, was suspended for a single day.
“My claims were sustained that he violated procedure. But there’s no law in the state of Washington that requires them to do a thorough investigation. That blew my mind! How can that be?’' Deyo said.
Attorneys told Deyo there is no legal recourse, because an officer ultimately decides on a case-by-case basis whether to pursue an investigation. She believes lawmakers ought to consider a victim’s rights law, which would hold a police department legally accountable for failing to properly investigate similar potential felony cases, something she calls “law enforcement malpractice.”
“They take an oath, to protect and serve,” she said. “If I have to be that voice, I’ll be the voice. Because I don’t want anyone else to go through this. I have PTSD to this day.”
Cox Media Group
