King County: When push comes to settlement

ONE can hardly imagine lawyers for King County agreeing to a $10 million settlement if they thought a personal-injury lawsuit was moving in their direction. The payment was wholly appropriate.

The settlement and abrupt halt to a trial in Tacoma ends as best it could for a family that essentially lost a loved one to a catastrophic brain injury. Christopher Sean Harris, 31, is paralyzed, unable to speak and bedridden for life. His wife and family live with the emotional and financial consequences.

Harris was slammed into a wall May 10, 2009, in downtown Seattle as he fled two black-clad men who chased him. Turns out they were King County deputies assigned to transit duty.

The case was a muddle of questions about how well the deputies identified themselves and who said what to whom after Harris was propelled into a wall.

The case also ended well for taxpayers. One can only guess how high the numbers would have soared if the jury had a chance to attach a figure to what it was hearing.

Add this case to others in the news in the past year, where the response — the escalation of response — by law enforcement was extreme. The public has a right to know if this is approved policy and standard training, or a failure of both.

The expectation for those authorized to use deadly force is that they are the best trained and most professional about making it the last option.

Watch the video of the incident, and try to imagine how he poses a threat to the officers or the people around him.

King County made a strategic retreat, got off cheaply, and spared the public the legal theater of years of appeals.

If the King County Sheriff's Department is not already reviewing training and operating procedures, it should be.