SEATTLE : Seattle’s interim police chief has apologized for appearing in a 1986 video that showed him and other officers mocking the homeless in what the city’s police department this week called an “ugly piece” of its history.
Interim Chief Jim Pugel, who is implementing sweeping reforms in the wake of a 2012 US Department of Justice report that found the city’s police routinely used excessive force, appeared in the video when he was a 26-year-old officer.
In the roughly five-minute clip, which officials say was part of a training video and which they released this week, Pugel and a few colleagues are seen wearing fake beards, dancing with glass bottles under a freeway overpass and singing parody lyrics to the 1964 song “Under the Boardwalk” by The Drifters. “Even by 1980s standards, the Seattle Police Department considered the video to be insensitive and inappropriate,” Pugel, who was appointed to his position earlier this month, said in a statement late on Thursday.
“I regret my participation and have professionally apologized for my role in it. I do so now publicly. I am truly sorry.”
Seattle’s interim police chief sorry for video mocking homeless
