Chinatown jaywalk case dropped; officer questioned over halting group
The student, Thao Le, 17, a senior at Evergreen High School in Boulevard Park, had claimed issuing of the ticket by a Seattle police officer was racially motivated.
Seattle Municipal Judge Pro Tem Charles Duffey dismissed the citation against Le — the only person in the group to be cited July 9 — after Officer Jess Pitts testified. No defense witnesses were called.
Pitts took more than an hour to describe the incident but said he could not tell precisely where Le was in a group of about 15 youths when they crossed South Main Street at Fourth Avenue South.
Duffey said that if Pitts couldn't tell where Le was when she was supposed to have jaywalked, then a motion to dismiss by Le's attorney, Yvonne Kinoshita Ward, "must be granted."
While the hearing was to determine whether the $38 jaywalking ticket should be upheld, much of the questioning focused on whether Pitts issued the ticket because of racial attitudes, and Duffey said such questions could be relevant.
Pitts said he'd been responding to a 911 call about 1:30 p.m. that day but stopped at the intersection behind another car, where he saw the youths.
Pitts said they crossed against a red light.
"They took the entire width of the road," he said.
Pitts said he used a loudspeaker in his patrol car to address the group, telling them two or possibly three times to move to the curb.
Pitts said he got no response and then rolled down his window and asked if any of them spoke English. Pitts said one girl finally raised her hand and said she spoke English.
The Asian-American youths were attending a leadership conference. They were walking from the Chinatown International District to Pioneer Square to attend another part of the program.
Pitts said he eventually gathered the group on the sidewalk, checked one young man for weapons and then was confronted by Le.
"She said, 'You wouldn't have stopped us if we had blond hair,' " Pitts recalled Le saying. "There's no doubt in my mind she was upset with me."
Other questions concerned whether Pitts had served in the military in Korea and whether he had formed any opinions about families there. He said he had, generally observing that Korean children respected their elders.
Le, who came to the United States from Vietnam nine years ago, said outside the court that she did ask Pitts whether he would have issued the ticket to blond, blue-eyed people. She said she got no answer, instead receiving a comment about "matching bracelets," an apparent reference to handcuffs.
She said the students didn't respond to the loudspeaker because a passing train had kept them from hearing the officer.
A police internal investigation is being conducted, and Le and her lawyer said a civil suit might be filed against police.
Ward, Le's attorney, said the limited testimony showed the ticket was issued because Le had antagonized the officer, not because she was jaywalking.
"I think you can derive from the facts, it's because she spoke up," Ward said.
Peyton Whitely can be reached at 206-464-2259 or pwhitely@seattletimes.com.