Seattle police release video of interaction with woman who accused officers of abandoning her

Seattle’s Interim Police Chief responding after a young woman accuses officers of abandoning her after she was caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting. Now the chief is releasing body cam video that seems to show just that.

This all went down exactly a week ago in Columbia City when a 17-year-old boy was shot in the leg.

But a Seattle woman and her Uber driver were caught in the crossfire, and they felt left to fend for themselves.

Chief Rahr thinks the shock of the incident may have led to a misunderstanding between responding police and the woman.

The police chief is not saying the woman made the story up. Absolutely not. Interim Chief Rahr went to great pains to say she is not blaming her. But she says the trauma of what happened at this intersection last Tuesday can take time to catch up with a person.

Now for the first time we have the body cam video.

This is how the officer approached the 24-year-old woman last Tuesday.  She was sitting in an Uber -- riddled with bullets -- after she and the driver were caught in the crossfire of a drive by shooting.  A 17-year-old male they do not know, appeared to be the target. But this body cam video shows she was calm -- and displayed little emotion.

When KIRO 7 talked to her Monday, she was anything but.

“My Uber driver and I are experiencing very intense trauma right now,” she said, her voice breaking. “And we feel completely gaslit by SPD.”

“I will tell you when I heard that I was quite alarmed,” said Interim Chief Rahr, “because I thought that does not sound like the officers in this department.”

Chief Rahr told KIRO 7 she launched an investigation after seeing our story and looked at the officer’s body camera to determine if he had done his job properly.

“I believe that she felt a great deal of trauma because of this event,” Rahr said. “She was not displaying that when the officers were taking her information.  She was cooperative and she was very helpful. And she also indicated that she wanted to go.”

“You’re going to be free to leave whenever you want,” the officer said to the woman on the body cam video.  “Awesome,” she replied. Then she left.

But Chief Rahr concedes there may be more the department can do even when a witness is not physically hurt but is still in pain.

“And we fail at our jobs if we don’t make people feel safe,” she said. “So, we’re looking at finding a way to get re-contact those who are likely impacted by this.”

The woman also said it took officers an hour to make contact with her and the Uber driver. SPD’s records show it took 19 minutes.

They were tending to the teenager because he had been shot.

As for his assailants, they are still on the loose. KIRO 7 will report if and when they are in custody.

Lieutenant Sean Moore with the Seattle Police Department told us another reason the response wasn’t exactly by the book. Normally in a shooting like this, police would have taken the Uber driver’s vehicle to collect evidence. However, Moore says in this case police believed they had collected enough evidence and he says there have been so many of these types of shootings that they would not have had room for the vehicle.