The lesson always seems to be if you are a minority and have a problem, don't call the police, because then you have two problems.

Has nothing to do with being a minority, but rather being in a psychotic violent state attempting to stab another person.

Way overdue.

When are the cops who did it being fired?

Yes, we're still waiting.

Charleena's children have been fed a pack of lies about their mother.

Someday they'll find the primary source material from the investigation. They'll listen to the police officer body audio where she casually invited them into her home. They'll listen to the minutes of unremarkable chit chat. And they'll hear minutes when she suddenly drew the knives in a confined space, yelled expletives at the officers, and attacked. They'll see the hallway surveillance video where the officers backpedaled out her apartment door seconds after shots were fired.

This settlement is a crime against Seattle taxpayers. Pete Holmes's whole office should feel ashamed of themselves. Karen Koehler should feel ashamed of herself for profiting from this unjust payout.

As a taxpayer, this travesty is being done in my name. My dollars are flowing into undeserving pockets. It's disgusting.

*and they'll hear when she suddenly drew the knives

Charleena Lyles is not the poster child for police misconduct.
She was a crazy woman who called the cops, invited them in, then snapped and attacked them with a big kitchen knife.

Pete Holmes can’t leave office soon enough.

More taxpayer dollars being used to pay off people because cops get to murder people. It would be infinitely less costly to fire the cops and take the payoffs out of their budgets and pensions. Yeah it's still taxpayer dollars, but the cops would feel it a lot more. Make the fucking cops pay for every single life they take. When will this country get sick of cops murdering people and everyone else but the murderers having to pay for it all?

Murder she wrote!

So everyone above acknowledges police are not properly trained to deal with mental health issues. Good. We should probably do something about that.

@9
No one is trained to deal with these kinds of mental health issues.

1 Crazy person
2 Crazy Person calls for help
3 Crazy person attacks those who came to their defense
4 Rinse and repeat

The problem is with the crazy people.

If they would stop acting crazy then maybe we could accommodate them.

Otherwise they are just crazy people acting crazy.

Since they refuse to stop acting crazy....

Unfortunately, the only people who said they felt threatened are the people who killed her. And police have lost all benefit of the doubt when it comes to the truth, because of, I don't know, decades of horrible, violent, and dishonest behavior, especially toward people of color. "I feared for my safety" just doesn't carry a lot of weight anymore.

Even if the threat happened as described, SPD admitted there were less-than-lethal options available to the officers, and that one of the cops "forgot" his taser. That tells me neither one of them should be cops if they cannot or will not use the proper tools at their disposal and want to solve everything with a gun.

Let's not act like there is no other way to handle people with mental health issues than to kill them please. As I said in slog pm, police seem to be pretty successful at capturing mass shooters alive (who are usually white men). And someone committing a mass shooting is definitely having a mental health crisis. So why couldn't a Black woman having a crisis be extended the same courtesy?

@12: She was. All she had to do was put down the knives as instructed. But she ignored them and attacked.

Cops don't want to stabbed, they deserve courtesy too as taxpayer funded employees.

@14, just comply and you have nothing to worry about right? that's the argument you're going with in 2021 regarding police behavior?

@15: Another silly extrapolation. I didn't say that.

@16 that's exactly what you said you obtuse shithead

@12 There is no less lethal option against someone who's attacking you with lethal weapons in a tiny confined space. Charleena fucking ambushed them with premeditation, and all you want to do is to make excuses for her.

You are literally saying that one officer's uniform equipment violation is more important than one civilian's conscious decision to call the police to her house for some bullshit reason, make small talk for a few minutes, and then spring on them with blades. Go fuck yourself.

@13 Cancer is an actual disease not an excuse for bad behavior.

@20 depression and anxiety aren't diseases. They are moods. Most people learn how to control their moods and emotions others refuse.

4 herrbrahms 100% spot on. Those that have this twisted idea the police were out to get her are equally mentally ill. Not one dime should have been paid out to this family as this is just another in a long line of prosecutorial misconduct by the city in a way to undermine the police in the mind of the citizenry.

The crime is that she was not getting the mental help she needed for whatever reason but the public shouldn't have to pay for the families mistake. The police should never have had to be placed into this situation because the family chose to look the other way while she succumbed to her mental illness that led her to charge the police with a deadly weapon and for that, the family wins, we lose.