by Paul Kiefer
(This article originally appeared on PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
The family of Iosia Faletogo, a 36-year-old man killed by Seattle police officers in North Seattle on New Year’s Eve 2018, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court against the City of Seattle on Thursday, March 4. The suit alleges that Faletogo’s fatal encounter with Seattle police officers began with an unjustified and discriminatory traffic stop and that the police officers who initiated the stop failed to de-escalate, ultimately leading to the struggle that ended when a police officer shot a prone Faletogo in the head.
“There wasn’t a clear necessity to detain Iosia or any risk of imminent harm that justified what happened to Iosia,” said Becky Fish, an attorney with the Public Defender Association representing Mr. Faletogo’s mother in administering his estate. Nathan Bingham, the attorney who filed the civil suit for the Faletogo family, specified that the suit will focus largely on the decisions by police officers that led up to the shooting, rather than on the moment of the shooting itself.
Continue reading Family of Man Killed By SPD in 2018 Sue City for Wrongful Death