Halloween can be a busy night for police work. It's a holiday with an unusual combination of drinking, masked people on the street, and of course lots of kids out trick-or-treating. But a review of scanner traffic from Halloween 2009 shows it was generally a quiet night in Seattle's East Precinct, with only routine calls going on up until the time when Officer Brenton was killed at 29th & Yesler.
Officers Brenton and Sweeney started their third-watch shift around at around 7:30pm. Their first radio transmission was recorded at 8:10pm with the call sign "3 George 13", when Officer Brenton notified dispatch about fireworks at 15th & E. Pike, saying "You're probably going to get some calls about shots fired around 15th & Pike. It's just fireworks." Note that the george sector covers most of the Central District south of Union and east of 14th Avenue, and is the beat that Sweeney and Brenton were assigned to patrol.
The next two hours of time are filled with routine traffic from around the precinct. A disturbance of people yelling on Pike Street, a man whose wallet and bag were stolen by a female he met in a bar, and many traffic stops.
In fact, a traffic stop is the next time that Brenton and Sweeney pop up on the radio, with Officer Sweeney reporting one at MLK & E. Jefferson at 9:28pm. She gives dispatchers the license plate number on a green '94 Infinity, and a minute later dispatch announces that the vehicle is clear stolen but has expired tabs. Officer Brenton confirms the message with "Received."
Police spokesperson Mark Jamieson tells us that there is absolutely no suspicion of that vehicle being involved in the shooting. For one, the vehicle description is very different from the small gray/white/light-blue Toyota that police are looking for as a suspect vehicle.
A traffic stop generally takes about fifteen or twenty minutes, and apparently at the conclusion of the stop, Officers Brenton and Sweeney drove the two blocks over to 29th & Yesler where they pulled over to discuss the stop. That is a critical part of the interaction between Brenton, a Field Training Officer, and Sweeney, a rookie seven months out of the academy. After every operation they would take time to talk about what went right and what went wrong in the encounter, using it as an ongoing educational opportunity that prepares the trainee for eventual independence as a full officer on the force.
The next radio transmissions at 10:06pm are heartbreaking, as Officer Sweeney breaks in to the radio and yells "Shots Fired! North on Yesler!" Dispatch announces her previously recorded location as 29th & Yesler and asks other officers to respond for help.
Police officials have repeatedly described Officer Sweeney's actions as those of "a tenured veteran", as she sensed danger, ducked to avoid the main barrage of gunfire, and then had the mental fortitude to regroup, exit the vehicle, and return fire at the fleeing suspects. She is now recovering at home from several grazing wounds from the shooting.
At a briefing this morning before the city council, Chief Diaz was asked whether there were any events in the preceding weeks that could have led up to the shooting. He responded that there were not, and that the shooting appeared to be random. Chief Diaz also speculated that one possible scenario was that the shooter "watched the traffic stop happen, and then came up and shot." But the timing between the original stop and the shooting, combined with the two block distance between the two would seem to make it difficult to draw any hard lines between the two separate events.
As Councilmember Richard Conlin said at the end of today's police briefing, the shooting was a "sad reminder that you and your force put your lives on the line every day for the city of Seattle"
