By Police1 Staff
SEATTLE — The city of Seattle will defend a City Council member at the center of a defamation lawsuit involving two police officers, potentially costing taxpayers $300,000.
KCPQ reports Officers Scott Miller and Michael Spaulding are suing councilmember Kshama Sawant, alleging that she unjustly called them murderers and accused them of racial profiling after they shot and killed a man in Feb. 2016. The officers said that the deceased, Che Taylor, was reaching for a gun before they opened fire. The officers were later cleared in the shooting.
Seattle City Council President Bruce Harrell wrote in an op-ed column in the Seattle Times that the decision for the city to defend Sawant is about law and not politics.
“While many may not agree with what Councilmember Sawant has to say, I believe we must defend her right to say it,” Harrell said in the column. “That is the cost of free speech.”
The officers said they are suing Sawant herself and not the city in order to alleviate the costs for taxpayers, but the city is defending her in the case anyway, despite not being named in the suit. With this being the second lawsuit against Sawant, taxpayers could pay as much as $300,000 for the city to defend her in both cases.
The other lawsuit filed by a landlord accuses Sawant of abusively calling him a “slumlord.”