SPD officer Andrei Constantin has been harassing activists for the past year using an anonymous Twitter account.
We did a deep dive into his disciplinary file.
Unsurprisingly, he’s amassed quite a record in his brief career. (THREAD)
Last week, antifascist activist @WhiteRoseAFA released a thread documenting how Constantin anonymously harassed a grieving mother, celebrated deadly violence against protestors, and called George Floyd’s murder “justice.” (1/10)
He was suspended last year for a questionable arrest. He and Ofc Hosea Crumpton stopped a man for trespassing. They argued for a bit over whether it was private property.
And Constantin made a quip that the guy was an “Antifa member with his mask off.” (3/10)
He was suspended last year for a questionable arrest. He and Ofc Hosea Crumpton stopped a man for trespassing. They argued for a bit over whether it was private property.
Constantin made a quip that the guy was an “Antifa member with his mask off.” (3/10)
When the man walked off the property, both officers deactivated their cameras and continued to watch him from their cruiser. They claim that he returned to threaten them and their families, so they arrested him.
This alleged threat was not recorded on BWV. (4/10)
OPA issued an “inconclusive” finding regarding whether the officers had probable cause to arrest this man, but they found both violated the BWV and professionalism policies.
Crumpton got 30 days without pay because this was his sixth sustained finding. (5/10)
Though OPA found his behavior “even more concerning” than Crumpton’s, Constantin was suspended only one day. (6/10)
This wasn’t the first blotch on Constantin’s record either.
He was previously reprimanded for the unconstitutional detention of a woman and her family at gunpoint. (7/10)
Constantin got a hit for a stolen vehicle on his automatic plate reader.
He lost sight of the car but stopped another one that didn’t match the description. Since a stolen vehicle is considered a “high-risk felony stop,” he approached with his gun drawn. (8/10)
OPA found that he had absolutely no legal justification to stop the woman or handcuff and search her husband.
Constantin claimed she was “driving suspiciously,” but a review of the video contradicted this. (9/10)
Lastly, Constantin threatened a man with a Taser to get him to stop walking away. He claimed that the threat was “de-escalation.”
OPA disagreed, but they only issued a “Management Action” recommending SPD clarify policies to say that a threat isn’t “de-escalation.” (10/10)
Cops are forming a line and making arrests. Some familiar faces. Larry Longley, Chris Gregorio and former council candidate Aaron Marshall wielding a 40 mm
LRAD just issued a warning to stay in the counter demo zone. About 15 bike cops are staging on the east side of the demo
@AshleyNerbovig Early in her time at the Stranger she broke the story of racist cop Burton Hill, who was later fired for calling his Chinese neighbor a racial slur. thestranger.com/news/2023/09/2…
@AshleyNerbovig She wrote about how the police union has sabotaged SPD's alternative response: thestranger.com/news/2024/03/2…
Actually, the criticism is: 1) She's a Republican who lives in DuPont who organized a rally to "take back" a city that she doesn't live in. (not even the same county/area code)
2) This event is the latest in a series of deeply cynical GOP efforts aimed at breaking off Asians from the Democratic Party. That's clearly laid out in the thread.
If she was just a person who happened to be Republican and decided to organize a vigil to honor the victim, there would be nothing to criticize about it. However, all the messaging betrays a partisan agenda while the GOP's role has been consciously concealed.
This seems like an opportunistic move that's part of a larger Republican strategy to woo Asian voters through a combination of grievance politics (see also that kid who didn't get accepted to Berkeley) and fear-mongering about crime and homelessness.
It's hard to overstate how deeply and transparently cynical this is. The original flyer for this thrown-together event didn't even spell Kwon's name correctly.
It shows how little they actually care about this woman whose death they're exploiting.
The version Brandi just posted changed the title to "Unite for Safety" and deleted the inflammatory references to women being "robbed, assaulted, and raped"