King County Prosecutor and local resident Dan Satterberg at the Oct. 21 press conference on the 'Operation Center of Attention' crime bust in White Center.

by Mark Neuman

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg stopped by the B-Town Blog office in Olde Burien for an interview recently, at our invitation.

In Part One, which we ran yesterday (read it here), we covered the future of capital punishment, the drop in violent crime over the recent three decades in Washington state, and the tough decisions a prosecutor must make.

In Part Two of our two-part interview, we discuss Operation Center of Attention, what Satterberg considers his most controversial decision, and even George Harrison and the Beatles.

Williams and Birk
“Probably the most controversial decision that I had to make had to do with the shooting of (woodcarver) John T. Williams by Seattle police officer Ian Birk” on a downtown Seattle street in the summer of 2010.

“And I knew that wasn’t going to be satisfactory to many members of the community because the facts of that case were so bad.

“Such a short time, I think the officer completely misread the situation when he saw Mr. Williams crossing the street. Nobody else was concerned, but the officer got out of his car and had a gun in his hand and closed that distance and then made the determination that that distance posed a risk to the officer.

“There were options that everybody wishes that he had taken and didn’t. Instead he fired his weapon,” killing Williams.

“We had to look at the state law about police use of force, and it’s different than what you and I get to use as citizens, and it says that no criminal liability shall attach to an officer who is using deadly force in good faith without malice,” Satterberg explained.

“And so the officer didn’t have anything like that. He made a professional judgment that many people disagreed with, that I disagreed with, but he said he thought he was at risk.”

Officer Birk “didn’t know this individual. He wasn’t acting with malice. It was a professional judgment,” Satterberg said. “I had to follow the law knowing that a lot of people would not be happy and it was really the peak of a symbol of a number of cases that revealed the Great Divide between the Seattle Police Department and the community that they serve.

“So I got a lot of emails about that, a lot of people with opinions about that. But I was following the law as the Legislature wrote it and that’s my job. I never go into a tough decision thinking ‘will this be popular’?

“You just have to do the right thing. Most of the time it’s great to have a job where you get up every day and go to the office and you just do the right thing. That’s the best job in the world. But sometimes you have to make unpopular decisions.”

Some of the guns and drugs confiscated during 'Operation Center of Attention' in White Center.

White Center: Operation Center of Attention
“Operation Center of Attention refers to a recent three-month long program where a great assembly of federal and state law enforcement agencies came together and said ‘We’ve got some great resources,’” Satterberg said.

“Particularly, Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms had some informants who were exceptionally good at blending in with the rough street crowd. These were professional, civilian informants who can go into a neighborhood and quickly figure out who’s selling drugs and who’s selling guns.

“Around the table we decided that White Center was an area that deserved to have this kind of attention,” Satterberg said. “And there was a particular hot spot around 16th Avenue where people would assemble and we knew that a lot of crime was going on in some businesses and on the street.

“Long story short, we brought these informants in and they were able to work their way fairly quickly along the street and buy drugs and guns.

“The largest amount of drugs we bought was a ten kilo buy of methamphetamine. And we also bought small amounts of crack and marijuana and heroin and other drugs as well. At the same time they were looking to trade what they claimed was stolen merchandise for guns.

“People (on the street) were very helpful and led them down the trail to people who were selling guns. Most of those people had prior felony convictions which makes selling guns a federal offense as well.

“We were able to take 68 guns off the street, and many kilos of drugs. And we identified about 57 offenders.”

The flow of prosecution continues with about half of those arrested making their way through the federal system and half  through the state system.

“The idea of Operation Center of Attention was to come in and say ‘We do know that this is going on and we are going to come in and make the statement that this is not okay in this community’ and help the community defend itself as well,” Satterberg said.

“Nobody thinks we can just go do this once. There is a commitment by all who were involved to continue operations in the White Center area designed to make sure that the people who are selling guns and drugs on the street know that there is a cost to being in that business.”

The Treehouse Dreamers is Dan's second band.

Dan Satterberg’s two bands
Satterberg for many years has played in a band comprised, in part, of buddies from high school days. His wife sings in the band and other members’ spouses participate.

“We play for charities and for good causes. We just play for fun because it’s a great way to keep friendships alive,” he said.

“We are called The Approximations, because we play the cover song approximately like the original. If we wanted to play the song exactly like the original we’d call ourselves The Exactamundos.

“We are all about rock ‘n’ roll, danceable rock ‘n’ roll. We’ve tested hundreds of songs with our ‘focus group’, the audience, and if it gets them up and dancing, that song gets to stay on the list, and if it doesn’t it’s gone.

“We do a lot Beatles and Stevie Wonder and Rolling Stones, stuff that you’ve heard of, but you haven’t heard a lot of other bands do that might get you up and dancing a little bit.

“We play a lot of gigs down at The Cove (in Normandy Park) which is fun for me because it’s a place as a kid always wanted to play. I saw bands playing there and I thought how cool that would be to play at The Cove. We play at Mick Kelly’s in Burien and in Kent.

“I play the bass guitar, do a little singing. And (I’m) really kind of the guy who’s crackin’ the whip on the band, make sure that we’re working and getting good gigs and practicing enough.

“We have another band call the The Treehouse Dreamers which is an all original group and we cut a CD a couple years ago, titled ‘Leave It Behind’.”

Since high school days “we always liked writing our own songs. It was fun to sit around the basement over at Gregory Heights where we played and start out the night with a few ideas and by the end of the night have a song and that was really exciting.

“The quickest way to clear the dance floor at a party is to say ‘Here’s a song I wrote.’ The Treehouse Dreamers stuff doesn’t get into The Approximations set list for that very reason.”

George Harrison
By coincidence of timing, our interview with Satterberg occurred on the day marking 10 years since the passing of George Harrison. We asked Satterberg if he’d like to comment.

“You know, the Beatles were Number One for me, and still are,” he said. “I’ve always been drawn to songwriters over shredders. Watching virtuoso musicians gets boring for me, but I love a good song that will last a long time.

“You imagine for George how tough it was being in a band with Lennon and McCartney who were cranking out these amazing classic hits, for him to have the courage to say ‘Boys, I’ve got a song over here.’

“But the songs that he left with the band ‘Here Comes The Sun’, ‘Something’, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, those stand out as being some of the timeless classics. They sound so good next to Lennon and McCartney, and then here’s a George song, and you can tell. They’re very different, they are very spiritual kinds of songs. He was a special guy.

“His licks were perfect and they fit and he wasn’t trying to overplay, he wasn’t trying to show off. He was just trying to be tasteful and that’s the kind of player I like.

King County Prosecutor and local resident Dan Satterberg at the Oct. 21 press conference on the 'Operation Center of Attention' crime bust in White Center.

by Mark Neuman

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg stopped by the B-Town Blog office in Olde Burien for an interview recently, at our invitation.

We covered several topics, including Operation Center of Attention, the future of capital punishment in Washington state, the toughest decisions a prosecutor must make, and even George Harrison and the Beatles.

When we first sat down with Satterberg for an interview a couple of years ago (read it here), he made us laugh summarizing his days playing for the Highline High School football team as a teenager.

“We were a small team, but we were slow,” he recalled.

He got a similar chuckle this time around when we asked:  What advice do you have for anyone planning on committing a crime in King County?

“Go to Pierce County,” was Satterberg’s obviously tongue-in-cheek  response. He continued with a more serious completion of his answer.

“That’s my simple advice. We actually have a good, strong public safety system here even though we have all suffered cuts across the board. But we’re never too busy take one more case.”

Capital punishment and its future
We asked Satterberg to comment on the recent announcement by Oregon governor John Kitzhaber that executions will not happen there as long as Kitzhaber is governor.

“I think the death penalty as the ultimate punishment in Washington state is applied very carefully, obviously very slowly, and it’s also very expensive,” Satterberg told us.

“There are lots of reasons to have a philosophical debate about the morality of it or the effectiveness of it.

“A governor is free to, on an individual case, grant clemency and set aside a death penalty. But you know, the people (of Washington) should have this debate. I think I’d like to see the people vote on it every 10 years: ‘Do you still want to have the death penalty?’”

Holly Washa was murdered in 1991.

Witness to an execution
Satterberg recalled serving as a witness in 2010 in Walla Walla at the execution by lethal injection of Cal Brown, who had tortured, raped and murdered 22-year-old Holly Washa of Burien in 1991.

“I volunteered to be a witness. I wanted to sit with Holly’s family who came out from Nebraska to see that and just kind of be there. We said we’d be there together throughout that whole case. It was a very emotional time for them. But I think there was a sense of relief for them.

“Now they don’t have to worry about Cal Brown anymore. They made a commitment to Holly in their hearts. It (police work, trial and appeal process) went on for 19 years. So you could argue both sides of that.

“It was a relief for them. It was also, you could say, cruel and unusual to put the victim’s family through that much. But at the end, they would have said to you ‘We are glad we don’t have to think about Cal Brown anymore. He got what he deserved.’”

Crime is way down since 1980
“The interesting thing about crime in the state of Washington in the last 30 years is that it’s actually gone down dramatically,” Satterberg told us. “I think the same is true for North Highline and Burien as well.

“The statistics are kind of shocking and I don’t know how to explain it entirely. But it goes like this: since 1980, Part One crimes, meaning murder, rapes, robbery, burglary, car theft (but excluding drug crimes), has gone down 43 percent in the state of Washington.

“At that same time, the public investment in the infrastructure that fights crime, meaning courts, police, prosecutors, judges, public defenders, jails and prisons has increased about a hundred and twenty percent.

“I think we’re doing a better job of apprehending people who are ‘in the business’ of crime: serial burglars, serial car thieves, sex offenders and we get them earlier in the process and we send them to prison for longer sentences.”

Visiting lifers in prison
Satterberg, who has served as county prosecutor since the spring of 2007, spent an evening about a year ago with the Concerned Lifers group at the state prison in Monroe.

“I was a guest and I sat in a room with about 40 men who have been sentenced to life in prison,” Satterberg said. “I just really wanted to hear from them about the system, the criminal justice system they were unwilling participants in, and ideas for reform. It was a very, very meaningful night for me. I learned a lot.

“One of the things I learned was that there are a lot of thoughtful people in prison. And there is a lot of talent behind bars who’ve done terrible things, many of whom accept the fact that they took a life or multiple lives and they know they’re not getting out, they don’t deserve to get out but they still want to be able to give back to the community.

Dan greets one of the courthouse companions.

“And one of the things they want to be able to do is to have their stories to be a lesson for young people who are just now dabbling in crime: ‘Don’t do the things that I did that led me this way.’

“So we’re actually working with some of the offenders who have been released, some of the Three Strike Robbery Two defendants who’ve been granted clemency and finding appropriate ways for them to talk to first offenders in the juvenile system.”

Tough and controversial decisions
“One of the great things about being prosecutor is that you have a lot of tough decisions and sometimes they’re internal. Who do I hire? Do I need to let somebody go? We have almost five hundred employees,” Satterberg said.

“I guess the thing that people need to know is that our office is full of really good, smart, caring, dedicated people who at some sacrifice to compensation decided to work for the public, and they love representing the people and they love coming to work and doing the right thing.

“In the last three-and-a-half years we have lost some 50 positions in our office: 36 prosecutors and 15 staff. So I had to make some tough decisions that have really kept me up at night.

“On the professional side we make death penalty decisions regularly and we decide whether we’re going to accept a plea to something less than charged. We evaluate cases and you have to make decisions on a regular basis.”

End of Part One.
Be sure to check back to The B-Town Blog tomorrow for Part Two.

The event will begin with lunch, then their club meeting followed by Dan speaking from 12:45 – 1:15 p.m., with a Q&A from 1:15 to 1:30 p.m. from both Rotarians and guests.

Angelo’s is located at 601 SW 153rd St. in Burien; (206) 244-3555.

All in the community are welcome to come hear Dan.

Dan is also a Highline High School graduate from the class of 1978 and resident of Normandy Park, so many of our Readers either know or identify with he and his family.

Kasey L. Guthrie, Dylan M. Lorang, David J. Moore and Justin L. Moore all plead ‘not guilty’ in court at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.

Here are more details from the King County Prosecutor’s office:

• Charges include Residential Burglary.
• Bail remains the same, $75,000 for Lorang and $50,000 for both Moore brothers.
• Guthrie was released on personal recognizance over the State’s objection.
• Dave Moore and Guthrie have court dates on July 27th, while Justin Moore will next appear on August 1st.
• Lorang will appear on August 17th at 1:00pm, all at the MRJC in Kent.

As we’ve previously reported:

Leonard Werner, 69, had been dead about two weeks before his body was found by relatives checking on him on June 24th. He lived alone in the 12600 block of Des Moines Memorial Drive, which, despite what other media is reporting, is actually located just north of Burien’s new city limits.

The cause and manner of death is still pending.

According to Sgt. John Urquhart, Werner’s house was ransacked and many of his possessions stolen as he lay dead on the floor. His two cars were taken as well. Some of the stolen items were found by Sheriff’s detectives on the day Werner’s body was discovered at the next door neighbor’s house.

More of Werner’s stolen property was recovered last night, as well as his two stolen cars. However some of the property may have already been sold on eBay.

Yesterday about 3 p.m., detectives located what they believed might be the stolen PT Cruiser under a tarp in the South Park neighborhood of Seattle. They obtained a search warrant for the house and recovered stolen property taken from Werner’s residence and made two arrests.

Information gleaned then led them to a house in Normandy Park for a third arrest, and then to a storage warehouse at S. 178th and Des Moines. The second stolen car was found in a storage unit.

The three men, ages 29, 36, and 37, were booked into the King County Jail for Investigation of Burglary and Possession of Stolen Property. The investigation is continuing.

The P-I report says that the four people charged include David Moore, Justin Moore, Kasey Guthrie and Dylan Lorang.

As we reported in late June (read our posts here and here):

Leonard Werner, 69, had been dead about two weeks before his body was found by relatives checking on him on June 24th. He lived alone in the 12600 block of Des Moines Memorial Drive, which, despite what other media is reporting, is actually located just north of Burien’s new city limits.

The cause and manner of death is still pending.

According to Sgt. John Urquhart, Werner’s house was ransacked and many of his possessions stolen as he lay dead on the floor. His two cars were taken as well. Some of the stolen items were found by Sheriff’s detectives on the day Werner’s body was discovered at the next door neighbor’s house.

More of Werner’s stolen property was recovered last night, as well as his two stolen cars. However some of the property may have already been sold on eBay.

Yesterday about 3 p.m., detectives located what they believed might be the stolen PT Cruiser under a tarp in the South Park neighborhood of Seattle. They obtained a search warrant for the house and recovered stolen property taken from Werner’s residence and made two arrests.

Information gleaned then led them to a house in Normandy Park for a third arrest, and then to a storage warehouse at S. 178th and Des Moines. The second stolen car was found in a storage unit.

The three men, ages 29, 36, and 37, were booked into the King County Jail for Investigation of Burglary and Possession of Stolen Property. The investigation is continuing.

Burien native and King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg announced Thursday (Nov. 12th) that Christopher John Monfort, 41, will face charges of aggravated first-degree murder charges for the killing of Seattle Police Officer Timothy Brenton, along with three counts of attempted first-degree murder for allegedly trying to kill his partner, aiming a gun at police, as well as first-degree arson charges for trying to kill officers by firebombing police vehicles at a city maintenance yard.

Along with that litany of charges, it’s also probable that Satterberg will pursue the death penalty for Monfort, as aggravated first-degree murder of a police officer is punishable by one of two sentences in Washington — life in prison without parole or the death penalty.

As we previously reported, Monfort was shot last Friday (Nov. 6th) outside his Tukwila apartment after being approached by police about his car, which matched a vehicle seen near the scene of Brenton’s death on Halloween night.

Christopher J. Monfort once attended Highline Community College.

After aiming a malfunctioning handgun at police, Monfort was shot on the scene and is still in custody at Harborview Medical Center. It was also revealed by his family today that he is paralyzed from the waist down as a result of the shooting.

According to Seattle Police documents, Monfort’s apartment had a cache of weapons, including bomb-making materials. He is also believed to have “worked alone” in the fatal shooting of Officer Brenton, and has been called a “lone terrorist” in this case. Detectives have recovered DNA evidence from both the arson scene at the city maintenance facility and the scene of Officer Brenton’s murder directly tying him to both incidents.

Detectives also recovered a .223 caliber rifle from Monfort’s apartment, and a ballistics test identified it as the firearm used in Officer Brenton’s murder.

Also recovered from Monfort’s apartment was a considerable amount of bomb-making material and evidence that indicates that the type of explosive devices Monfort was in the process of making or had made were even more lethal than the ones used in the Oct. 22nd arson.

According to police, “he clearly was intending to inflict even more destruction in his next criminal attack.”

Further examination of the explosive devices used in the arson and of the devices found in his apartment indicate that Monfort was also intending to harm first responders to the scene, such as police and fire department personnel.

Monfort once attended Highline Community College in Des Moines, where he became involved in student government and was elected vice president of legislation.

The Oct. 23, 2003, edition of HCC’s student newspaper The Thunderword describes how Monfort ran for student senate and spoke at a candidates’ forum, where he was quoted as saying:

“Too often, too many of us walk around with our head in the clouds.”

According to the article, Monfort:

“…believes he is unique, because he is upset about our current state of government and actually wants to do something about it. … The student body has been cheated and lied to by the Bush Administration,” said Monfort. He plans on putting together a petition to bring our soldiers home.”

Monfort was also quoted as saying: “Our freedom is under attack.“

by Mark Neuman

We sat down recently for a talk with King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg.

Dan joked while recollecting his days playing both offense and defense for Highline High School’s football team in the late 1970′s.

“We were a small team, but we were slow.”

The Pirates won, perhaps, four games during the three years Dan was there.

“But really, I have to say that learning to lose and learning to do so with some grace and class is part of learning to live,” he said. “I think I may have learned more by being on a losing team than I would have being on a state championship team.”

Dan went on to the University of Washington for his BA in Political Science and a law degree.

“My favorite professor in law school was the one that scared me the most. His name was Arval Morris, a constitutional law professor. He was an intellectual giant,” Dan said. “I was in awe of him because of his ability to analyze and his depth of knowledge.

“He taught us so much about constitutional law and the rules of criminal law and how the government interacts with its citizens. The contract between government and citizens is the Constitution.

“It’s a fascinating area because we continue to define what we mean by that contract. The Constitution is a living, breathing document in my office because we look at Fourth and Fifth and Sixth Amendment issues every day as we analyze cases.

“I love the law, and I see those years in law school as formative years,” Dan added. “The prosecutor has a significant role in moving law in new directions. A prosecutor can actually direct traffic.”

JUVENILES WITH GUNS
One area where Dan is directing traffic deals with attempting to separate kids from gang activity before they fire a weapon in commission of a crime.

“You would think that when a 16 or 17 year-old youth is caught with a handgun that we would bring to bear all of our resources because this is a giant red flag. ˜We better pay attention to this kid,’” Dan said. “But the truth is that current state law builds in a tolerance where literally nothing happens until (there are) five felony convictions.

“And only then the kid, by law, would go to a Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration facility, let’s say Echo Glen, for a period of time.

“So the message that we send to a kid is that gun possession is not a big deal.”

Dan Satterberg and The State Prosecutors Association want to change that. They are pressing the Washington State Legislature to make changes to the law during the upcoming legislative session such that a juvenile found in illegal possession of a handgun will “get an immediate response from the system. We don’t wait. The kid gets removed from the community and put into Echo Glen,” he said.

“And while there the juvenile can get help with tried and true programs such as Moral Recognition Therapy which helps him understand his options and the potential consequences of his future actions.”

Dan greets one of the courthouse companions.

CANINE COMPANION PROGRAM
Dan spoke about the relatively new Canine Companion Program which involves having a dog in the courthouse to help calm the nerves of those going through the legal process.

“We have a dog in our office. Her name is Ellie, a six year-old Golden Lab. Ellie’s full time job is to come in and lay on the floor and look up at you with doe eyes. She puts kids at ease. We use her with our elder abuse cases as well.

“Once we got Ellie on board we realized this is an essential part of what we need to do to put witnesses and victims at ease. We have a lot of children who come into our office to talk about sexual abuse that happened to them or some scary moment, and when they see the dog all of a sudden everything’s okay. And they want to come back to see Ellie again.

“We even bring the dog up to drug court. Ellie will put her head in the lap of someone who may be heading to prison because they screwed up.

“Ellie doesn’t discriminate. Ellie loves everybody.”

NORM MALENG AND THE JOB OF PROSECUTOR
The duties of King County Prosecutor involve overseeing a staff of about 500, including 220 attorneys. The Office of the Prosecutor has an annual budget of $56 million.

Those duties fell on Dan’s shoulders quite unexpectedly in the spring of 2007 when long time Prosecutor Norm Maleng died suddenly at the age of 68.

Dan was appointed by the King County Council to serve as prosecutor and subsequently won election to serve the remainder of the full term.

“It was a great honor for me to work with Norm Maleng for 17 years. I was just 29-years old when he selected me to be his chief of staff.

“What I learned from Norm was not so much about the law as about life in general. I started with him shortly after he’d lost his daughter in a tragic sledding accident. So he was in many stages of grief and I learned an awful lot about dealing with people in grief.

“One of the things that he taught me was that every one of the thousands of felony cases we deal with involves a human tragedy, a story of someone’s hurt or loss or suffering.

“Norm would always start out a meeting with a homicide victim’s family by reaching out and saying how sorry he was that this happened to their family. He would say ˜Tell me about your son or daughter.’ To make that case and that person alive. The case wasn’t just a file full of papers.

“I try to keep that practice alive. What makes this job so meaningful is the ability to reach out and talk to victims and their families.”

THE FAMILY AND THE BAND
Dan and his wife, Linda, have two children and live in Normandy Park.

When he finds the time, Dan loves rocking out with his pals in their band The Approximations. Here’s info from their website:

Organized by bass player and singer Dan Satterberg (aka the King County Prosecutor), the band includes harmonica player and vocalist Bill Mattocks leader of the Bill Mattocks Band, keyboardist and vocalist Michael Hepburn from the nationally known 80′s R&B group Pleasure; drummer and vocalist Rusty Fallis, guitarist Tom Pratt, guitarist and vocalist John Rankin, percussionist and drummer Fred Staples, vocalists Linda Norman and Michelle Purnell-Hepburn. Tom, Rusty, Dan and John also play and record original songs as the Treehouse Dreamers.  With such a large band and wide array of musical backgrounds, the Approximations are likely to play songs by Smokey Robinson, the Beatles, AC/DC, Savoy Brown, Stevie Wonder, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Fleetwood Mac and Kings of Leon all in the same set.

The Approximations have played their full, multi-faceted, danceable rock sets in Seattle venues such as the Showbox, Showbox Sodo, Mountaineers Club, and the Highway 99 Blues Club entertaining for private functions, special occasions, and benefits for the Domestic Violence Coalition, and the American Cancer society among others.

The band’s website is here, and you can view videos of the band in action here.

You can catch The Approximations at Mick Kelly’s Irish Pub (located at 435 SW 152nd Street in Burien), this Friday night, Sept. 18th: