I would like to explain in detail what happened to me on October 9, 2004, and the way it affected my life from that time forward.

In the morning hours of Saturday, October 9, 2004, I had gone to visit my father, who lived in South Seattle. It was around 10am or so, and I spent time with him as we usually did, discussing the latest sports news of the day.

Later in the afternoon on the same day, I left my father’s house and met up with my girlfriend (at the time). My girlfriend picked me up in her car, and we had dinner together at her house, which was also in South Seattle. After dinner, I asked my girlfriend to drop me off at my grandmother’s house on Beacon Hill.

My mother and my older brother were both there at my grandma’s house, and I had a chance to visit with all of them that evening.

Approximately 9:30pm that same evening —October 9th —  I walked down the hill to the QFC grocery store near the corner of Rainier and McClellan, in the Mt. Baker area of Seattle. When I first came into the parking lot, I saw a guy who I knew from Wendy’s. He appeared to be leaving his job and we recognized each other because I often stopped at Wendy’s for a bite to eat.

We spoke briefly—just ‘hello and how’s it going’ — not much more than a quick, friendly conversation. I didn’t know his name, but he recognized me.

After he left the parking lot, I was still standing there outside the QFC store, when multiple police officers suddenly pulled up in squad cars and closed in on me.  I had no idea what they were doing there, but it was evident they were approaching me. Strangely, the cops said nothing to me as they got out of their cars and surrounded me.

Without any explanation, they proceeded to apprehend me. I still had no idea why they were there. I remember being pushed to the ground by several officers.

I was completely confused. They began to punch me and knee me as they wrestled me to the ground— still with no explanation as to what I had done.

The sudden appearance of the officers, and the violence which they used against me, had me confused and reeling. I was 19 years old at the time, just recently graduated and had plans to go back to school. Basically, I was a young black man standing outside a grocery store.

Everything happened really fast after they arrived. The officers— who were all white men— held me face down on the ground while I was put in handcuffs without being told that I was under arrest.  No one read me my Miranda rights.

My head was lifted up by one police officer, while another officer choked me until I was unconscious. I remember the pain in my neck as they choked me. I felt like I was moving between life and death. I remember crying and calling on God; I felt like I had disappeared into a black hole.

My next memory of that same night— when I came to consciousness— I was on the I-90 bridge onramp (off of Rainier Avenue). I remember walking, but I was totally disoriented. I realized that I was completely naked, which freaked me out because I had no recollection of taking off my clothes, and it’s important to note that my clothes were never found or returned to me.

I continued to fade in and out of consciousness while I drifted or stumbled onto the shoulder of I-90.

I assume someone called the police because my next memory was that of being tasered by law enforcement.  I felt pain in my whole body, and I also remember being manhandled again.

I was still fading in and out of consciousness, and I’m sure this was because I had been beaten so badly at the parking lot earlier in the evening.

I remember being put into an ambulance while I was on the shoulder of I-90 bridge and when I arrived at the hospital (Harborview Medical Center) the Seattle Police were already there.  They told the ambulance medics that I had taken PCP and that I had been “subdued” —In other words, they had tasered me.

They also told the medics that I had wandered onto the I-90 bridge freeway, and alleged that it was due to PCP.

There was no accounting for why I had been severely beaten in the parking lot, or how I had gotten to I-90. The time between the QFC parking lot and arriving on the bridge was a mystery to me, because I was unconscious after the beating.

As I stated earlier, I came back to a semi conscious state on I-90, but I had no idea where I was, or how I had gotten there.  I walked onto the freeway and along the side of the wall. I remember cars speeding by. The next thing I remember was pain. I don’t know if the pain was from being tasered, or if the cops had stopped me to punch me further. I just know that I was not fully conscious when they found me.

As I relay these memories, I feel as though I am piecing together dream sequences from a nightmare. It was probably a few hours between the incident at QFC and being tasered on the I-90 bridge, but the police appeared quickly on the scene both times.

At the hospital, the medics were told by the police that I had been smoking PCP, and they passed this information on to the doctors. The doctors— without further questioning— administered a drug called Haldol, which is a powerful anti-psychotic medication.

(In fact, I had not needed any anti-psychotic medication. My disoriented state that night was because I had sustained a brutal beating by the police, and I was still in shock.)

Nevertheless, I was given the medication and kept in the hospital overnight. I was never formally arrested and there was never an incident report sent to my address by the police. To my knowledge there was no documentation of the tasering on I-90 bridge, and no one at Harborview Medical informed my mother that I had been tasered.

Due to leaving out this information, there was no way of knowing which officers had used tasers on me that night.

The PCP story would later be refuted by my toxicology examination, which showed no trace of PCP in my system.

My brother came to pick me up from the hospital the next day. However, when I left the hospital I was still in a state of confusion.  I told my brother that I felt disoriented. It was a peculiar high and it made me uneasy. It was hard to describe then, and it’s hard to describe now, because I had never felt like that before.

I didn’t realize that I had been given a powerful anti-psychotic drug.

I also felt like my impulse control was gone, which was weird and embarrassing.

With regards to Harborview Medical Center, I would like to note the following:

Although the hospital was uncertain of my age, my mother was not contacted that night by the hospital staff—although they alleged that they had done so.

I learned later that the hospital had contacted my best friend’s mother. His mother told him to call my mother, and that is how my mother knew I was in the hospital.

In other words, the hospital did not contact my mother, and from the very beginning of this episode, my family was not informed clearly or accurately about what really happened.

The hospital records which I have seen did not contain my personal contact information; instead they had my best friend’s contact information, as if it were mine. My best friend’s name is Dennon Douglas-Majors.

I should also note that I was taken to the hospital without clothes or ID, so unless the police already knew my name, I’m not sure how the hospital knew who to call.

When my mother arrived at the hospital, it was somewhere between 3 and 4:00 in the morning - in other words, it was during the first hours of October 10th.  When she arrived, I had no clothes on, just a sheet covering me, and I was handcuffed to the bed. My brother and my sister accompanied my mom to the hospital, and knowing they were there in the room gave me a level of calmness for the first time in hours.

The hospital staff told her (incorrectly) that I had PCP in my system, and claimed that this was why I’d been brought to the hospital from the I-90 bridge.  My mother was never informed that I had been tasered, and just as importantly, she was not informed about the incident at the QFC parking lot.

My mother was also not informed that I had been given Haldol at the hospital. Because she was not told about the Haldol—which affects everyone differently—she was puzzled by the incidents which followed about a week later. She was led to believe that I was using PCP, which was never true.

Furthermore, my mother was not given my toxicology report, which proved I had no PCP in my system, and it wasn’t until 2018 that the police finally released the records which showed that I had been accosted at QFC before the incident on the bridge.

After the QFC Assault

After I was released from the hospital, which was about mid morning on October 10th, my life changed drastically.  I began to hear voices in my head.  I was still trying to piece together what had happened to me in the QFC parking lot, but I wasn’t able to give anyone an accurate description of what had happened. In the course of the evening, I had been beaten unconscious, stripped of my clothing, tasered, and given anti-psychotic medication. The trauma was real, and it affected my memory.

In the days which followed, I found myself over-analyzing everything around me. I had trouble sleeping, and I experienced nightmares. Several times, I woke up in tears. I was fearful of encountering the police in any way, and that feeling stayed with me for several years.

Given the fact that my family did not fully understand what had happened to me, they were inclined to believe the police narrative, which was very different from what actually happened.  According to the police, there was no incident at QFC. They began their narrative with the incident on the I-90 bridge, and FAILED TO REPORT what had happened earlier in the evening.

Because everyone was inclined to believe the police— including my family and friends —this was a source of great pain and embarrassment to me for many years.

About a week after the beating at QFC and the strange encounter on the I-90 bridge, I was with my cousin, who was driving us to West Seattle. (It was on or about October 18th.) We stopped at a stoplight on 1st Avenue, and acting on impulse, I jumped out of my cousin’s car.

From the time I had left the hospital, I had been hearing voices in my head, and I could not explain my actions. After jumping out of the car, I ran down the street in traffic, and began to open and close doors on stranger’s cars. It was a scary situation for the strangers, and it was also a scary situation for me, because, at that time, I was not in control of my mental state.

Once again, Seattle Police officers showed up and tasered me.

I was detained and sent back to the hospital. Later that same day, I was released and sent home to my family, but a few hours later, I had to be rushed back to the hospital. My body had become paralyzed, and I was having a hard time breathing. The doctors administered Benadryl, and told me that it was meant to counteract the drug they had given me a week earlier—the Haldol.

After looking into the effects of tasering on the body, I now wonder if that may have contributed to the paralysis.

For over a year, the voices continued to plague my mind and encourage me to commit suicide.  Years later, after speaking to a therapist, it was recorded that I had developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which lasted for over 13 years. My PTSD has resulted in increased depression and erratic behavior.

It took me years to understand what had happened to me, and it is my belief that the brutal beating in the QFC parking lot, the multiple police tasering and the anti-psychotic drug administered at the hospital have all worked together to limit my memory of these events.

I noticed that people around me were enjoying their life, yet I felt that I had very little to smile about. I was embarrassed to be in crowds in general, and it was hard to interact with my peers.  I became reclusive, and that is not my personality.  I didn’t feel safe, especially on Seattle city streets, and I stopped walking anywhere at night for several years.

I began to question reality and everything around me. I felt that if I didn’t talk about what happened, that others would forget about it. I got a job, poured myself into my work, and found that to be helpful. Focusing on my work helped me improve my social skills and gave me back some of my confidence.

I should note here that when the first incident occurred in 2004, I was young, and I had little support from my family and friends—who believed the police account over my own.  It is not surprising that I was later diagnosed with severe depression. My family was unable to help me through this time, and to add to my emotional distress, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005. She has survived the cancer, and I am grateful for that, but cancer affects the whole family, and it added another layer of stress to my life.

In November of 2006 I had another fateful encounter with the SPD, which occurred directly in front of my father’s house. It is my sincere belief that this arrest stemmed from the original October 9th incident in 2004, and the Seattle police hoped to  intimidate me so that I would not pursue a course of action against them.

I believe that it was their intention to instill fear.

The matter came to court, however, it was never revealed in court that the arrest had occurred directly in front of my father’s house.  I would like to add that I was close to my father, we had a good relationship and we had grown close over the years.

In January, 2007, just a few months after the November 2006 arrest, my father died suddenly of a heart attack, causing another setback in my life. My father had been extremely supportive of me throughout my tribulations, and he always insisted that I take care of my health first.  He reminded me that it would take some time to heal from what had happened to me, and he was unwavering in his belief in me. He reminded me that we all face adversity in life, and that the bad things that had happened were not the things which should define me.

His untimely death ushered in a new wave of sadness and grief, and made a dark time in my life much worse.

For reasons that are incomprehensible to me, my dad’s family insisted that he be buried on my birthday.

Before my father died, he knew that I had been completely freaked out by the incident which occurred in front of his house, and it was because of that incident that I hired, in 2007, one of the most prominent attorneys in the state of Washington, Mr. Richard Hansen.

I told Mr. Hansen that I believed my civil rights had been violated, and he agreed.  I also asked him to go to the FBI because— at that time— I felt that my life was in danger. The beating in the QFC parking lot, and the harassment and arrest in front of my father’s house both happened close to home.

My attorney responded by telling me that we had to go to court first for the incident in front of my father’s house.  He said that we had to resolve that issue in court before going to the FBI.

I took my attorney’s advice, without realizing that he could have filed a brief with the DOJ or the FBI to investigate the 2004 incidents. My attorney completely ignored my first concern, which was my belief that the police had targeted me in front of my father’s house in order to intimidate me into silence over the QFC beating.

For the next five years, I was embroiled in this case. Throughout this entire process, I was still grappling with fear, disbelief, and a feeling of powerlessness.

I had found myself in another peculiar incident with the police, wherein their version of the story was very different from mine. The fact that they lied— again— caused my fear and panic to rise to unprecedented levels. I paid an attorney to help me, and yet I felt that I wasn’t getting the help I needed.

In the intervening years, the turmoil that had become my life.

It didn’t help my outlook that I felt increasingly alarmed by my attorney, Mr. Hansen, who seemed to have no sense of urgency about my concerns.

He did believe that I had been targeted by the police, and admitted as much to me—yet he didn’t do anything about it, although I had asked him to do so. He failed to contact the Prosecuting Attorney at the Department of Justice, who was his friend Jenny Durkan. Now the Mayor of Seattle in 2020

In the meantime, because of a shooting, I wasn’t able to walk, and wasn’t able to do the footwork required to accomplish this.

It wasn’t until after I was fully healed - which took about two years - that I was finally able to focus on unearthing the information from the assault at the QFC parking lot.

Mr. Hansen was considered to be one of the best trial lawyers in the state of Washington at the time. I explained everything to him in detail about the police.  I shared my fears and my paranoia with him. I wanted the assault which occurred in 2004 to be uncovered. He failed to take my concerns about that assault into account, and instead counseled me to go through the court system first —before filing a claim with the DOJ.

I continued to feel that I had been targeted by the Seattle Police, and came to feel that no one cared about that incident, including Mr. Hansen.

Given the fact that I had been attacked for no reason by the police in 2004, had been arrested in front of my father’s house in 2006, and had been the victim of a random shooting in the street in 2008, my state of mind continued to be one of paranoia and confusion.

In spite of these things, I sought help and support, in the hope that the police would be held accountable for what they had done on that October night in 2004.

It was not until 2011 that I was able to make my attorney understand the significance of the 2004 incident. At my insistence, he made an attempt to look into the matter.  He filed a records request with the Seattle Police Department, and the SPD replied that they had no records for October 9 or October 10, 2004 related to me.

Because he was unable to obtain those records, Mr. Hansen was unable to help me. He said that I should just be happy and grateful that I had won my case in the Supreme Court. And I was very grateful for that.

However, the Supreme Court case came about because of the arrest in front of my father’s house. It had worked its way through the court system and eventually wound up before the Washington State Supreme court, where the case was overturned due to illegal search and seizure on the part of the police.

But the case which Mr. Hansen tried had come about because of the incident in 2004, so I never felt closure on the original incident. It felt to me like the white power structure was protecting itself, and no one even wanted to talk about it.

2012

In 2012, I hired a private investigator to look into the 2004 incident, and the police again stated that they did not have any records.

However, the private investigator concluded that the Seattle Police Department had engaged in a major coverup. The investigator noted that the hospital records at Harborview had many inconsistencies. The most notable inconsistency was that the police had been involved in that first visit—according to the hospital —yet SPD alleged that they had no records concerning me for that night, the night in question.

Also in 2012, I hired another attorney, a civil rights attorney. This came about because Mr.Hansen had decided that the only important case was the one which he had won in the Washington State Supreme Court. He moved on to other cases.

The civil rights attorney, Mr. Ernest Saadiq Morris, believed that— without the 2004 records from the police— it was best to focus on the incident in 2006, which had been ruled in my favor. He wanted to focus only on that. When he filed his brief, he never mentioned the 2004 incident.

I told him that I wanted him to put the language pertaining to 2004 into his brief, but he declined.

So I found myself back at the beginning. No one wanted to discuss the original assault. I have a little daughter, and someday she will hear this story. I want her to know the truth.

SUMMARY

This story began in 2004 with an inexplicable assault by the police. I was a young man, and naive about the criminal justice system. I hired attorneys who, in the end, did not address the original incident. I paid them to investigate this case, to file complaints, to go to the FBI, and they failed to do those things in a timely manner, if at all.

I also hired a private investigator who concluded that there had been a cover up by the police, and yet I will still unable to find resolution and peace.

It is my belief that the police broke the law by making it a pattern or practice to target me on multiple occasions. The physical harm inflicted on me has changed my life. Until recently, they were able to cover up the incidents by misplacing or distorting the paperwork.

The savage nature of the beating, along with being choked unconscious, has clouded my memory and even now, I can only recall bits and pieces of what happened. Without access to the police records, I didn’t realize the extent to which my rights had been violated. I had come to feel a sense of hopelessness about ever seeing the police held accountable for anything.

Demand Justice for Roger Wright

Please contact Seattle Council Members

Tammy Morales (206) 684-8802 Tammy.Morales@seattle.gov

Lorena Gonzalez (206) 684-8809 Lorena.Gonzalez@seattle.gov

King County Council Member

Girmay Zahilay (206) 477-1002 Girmay.Zahilay@kingcounty.gov