Road rage? Sounds more like 'roid rage.

“Are you going to take me to jail?” the driver asks.

“Maybe, right now you’re obstructing,” Belgarde says.

jesus christ, what a thin-skinned tiny -dicked baby. so glad he has a gun. fucking clown shoes SPD

SPD and KCSD pull these kinds of bullshit moves all the time: I've personally witnessed cops flashing their lights to run stop signs and yellow/red lights, pass heavy traffic via turn lanes, exceeding speed limits, etc., etc. And no, they're not doing it because they just got a call, because as soon as they pass whatever "obstruction" is making them late for their donut break, they turn off the lights and slow down. It's like driving a cop car, whether marked or no, gives them the impression they can just flagrantly break traffic laws they'd pull civilians over without a second thought.

it's the *rounding error of cops that give the other *rounding error of cops a bad name.

"The OPA did recommend discipline against Belgarde in 2016 after he and two other officers shot and killed Cornielous Morris, an unarmed Black man."

Not to rush to this assholes defense or anything but the linked story says he missed and the guy lived

Can we at minimum not hire cops that get into bar fights. Can we put the bar that high?

@5 and @6
Thank you for catching those, they needed to be corrected. - Ashley

@10 Always! You all keep me humble.

SPD should be prohibited from hiring any more ‘apples’ until they can demonstrate their ability to effectively remove any and all ‘bad apples’ they currently have in their ‘barrel.’

@11 @10 @Ashley Nerbovig - Don't correct the article yet. I think Ahab's interpretation is incorrect, or it is a gray area.
According to Spokane Police here: https://spokanepolicereforms.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/unmarked-vehicles-fact-sheet.pdf - it is disallowed
According to this Kitsap Sun article: https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/news/2020/01/17/legality-using-unmarked-cars-speed-enforcement/4504427002/ - it seems to be a gray area that police departments are taking advantage of.
And from my own reading of the RCW, only the WSP is allowed to use unmarked cars for traffic violations if it is part of the ADAT team. Local police and sheriffs are not allowed to use unmarked cars unless it is for "special undercover or confidential investigative purposes" - and traffic control is not a special undercover or confidential investigative purpose.

It seems to me that departments are getting away with how poorly the RCW is written, but this creates an unsafe scenario for carjacking and impersonating officers. Perhaps instead of correcting the article, you should dive deeper into this gray area.

@6 what traffic infraction was alleged? "Road rage" isn't an infraction, and I don't know any law that says a driver needs to show identification to an officer having a temper tantrum. The bus driver should be fully exonerated

Just the other day I watched a cop car (ahem, SUV) suddenly swerve into the path of a bus I was riding, forcing the driver to slam the brakes. But in this case the bus driver didn't honk. Apparently that moment of professional self-restraint saved us a half-hour of idling by the curb.

Personally I think Seattle has enough police officers. Perhaps not an excess number of them, but enough. They're just allocated in sometimes ridiculous ways. I don't know why a one- or two-person encampment sweep needs to involve a half-dozen cops, but that seems to be standard procedure. Now multiply that by the number of sweeps (a dozen? two dozen?) in an average day and it's no wonder real crimes don't get a faster response.

@16: "If we haven't expressed what we want the rules of society are to be in the law, via are elected legislators, that's on us, not the person, or agency, doing something we don't like, because the law doesn't prohibit it."

Actually we ought to expect a professional public safety agency to have a point of view on unclear laws relating to public safety, and to take the lead on establishing clarity.

@13 Ahab - the RCW DOES prohibit the use of unmarked cars from operations other than special undercover or confidential investigative purposes.

The exception clause is what is causing confusion:
"This section shall not apply to vehicles of a sheriff's office, local police department, or any vehicles used by local peace officers under public authority for special undercover or confidential investigative purposes."

FACT: The “undercover or confidential investigative” requirement applies to all the vehicles in that
sentence. If that sentence did in fact cover two separate categories of vehicles, they would be noted
with an (a) and a (b) as is done in the very next sentence which reads: "This subsection shall not
apply to: (a) Any municipal transit vehicle operated for purposes of providing public mass
transportation; (b) any vehicle governed by the requirements of subsection (4)..."

It is expressly prohibited, but because people misread it, people like you are giving them powers they don't have. And then the reporter amends the article to further confuse people and take away our power one bit at a time.

This cop created an unsafe situation for both himself and others: escalating a situation over a honk at a car that wasn't identifiable. In similar situations, how would a citizen know the difference between an undercover cop making a prohibited traffic stop and a carjacking?

@16 you have a view of the law as terrifying as it is absurd. Law preserves the rights of citizens but constrains the powers of government. Police are empowered to make traffic stops ONLY to the extent authorized by law.

@21 Ahab

I actually did do some further investigation on this, I called SPD in the flesh and got a Sgt with traffic enforcement. I specifically asked what their policy was and how both a citizen and an officer would avoid a dangerous situation when unmarked cars are used for traffic enforcement (i.e. causing a citizen to suspect a carjacking in progress etc).

He offered no official policy but did make a point to say that currently SPD does not use any unmarked cars for their (shrinking) traffic enforcement group. That said, he also claimed that other groups like SWAT etc. could make traffic stops if they 'needed to'. So basically more gray area nonsense here - they think they can do whatever they want so long as they make up an excuse, regardless of the law.

To your comment about "confidential investigative purpose could be catching speeders, or other motor vehicle violations" - no, the SPD is not permitted to set up 'sting operations' for traffic enforcement by RCW 46.08.065(1) and this is evidenced by the fact that later in (3) it states that only the WSP can: "(3) .... Traffic control vehicles of the Washington state patrol may be exempted from the requirements of subsection (2) of this section at the discretion of the chief of the Washington state patrol." -- PROVIDED that the WSP Chief so orders, which is the special "Aggressive Driving Apprehension Team" (ADAT) that you previously linked. (Which while it seems to be allowed by the law, it also creates dangerous situations that I completely disagree with).

It might be true that arguing with this alone might be difficult, but its plain to see in this case with the Metro bus that the driver had no way of knowing this was a cop when he honked (justifiably). Had the car been properly marked it would have been obvious to the bus driver that maybe the cop was making the aggressive move in order to respond to a call etc and there would have been no problem. Having cops perform 'sting operations' by driving aggressively and then pulling people over when they react to it is essentially entrapment, and is forbidden in most cases (as it should be) on the road because of how extra dangerous that would be with moving vehicles for everyone involved.

The Stranger is now altering stories based upon some moron commenter's interpretation of the law? What the fuck?

@23 "nobody was injured so it wasn't a dangerous traffic maneuver" is an insane standard. Almost as insane as arguing the cops can do whatever they want as long as it isn't specifically prohibited by RCW and the public has only ourselves to blame

@25,

A moron commenter who's been banned from posting to the site literally dozens of times to boot.

"Special Victims Unit Detective Belgarde may also face consequences depending on what the OPA finds in its investigation."

This is the most naive part of the article. Does anyone believe that an SPD officer will face consequences over this? They can literally kill people without consequence. Whatever slap on the wrist that the OPA might suggest will be bitterly contested by SPOG, and it will become another in a long line of jokes that SPD officers will recount to each other in between running over pedestrians.

Anthony Belgarde. One of Seattle's Finest. Bad cops make for bad police forces. And the city electeds obviously want nothing to do with the matter. Duck and run.