The Man the Police Tried to Make Disappear
A citizen detained for three days without a warrant or charge fights back against the Chief of Police.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Suit has been begun in the superior court by Thomas Gibbons against S. H. Jackson, chief of police; Edward McInroe and George Carle, city detectives; and J. J. Tappen and Daniel R. Noble, day jailers of the city prison, to recover damages for false imprisonment. Gibbons was arrested without a warrant and kept for three days as a prisoner in the city jail, without any charges having been preferred against him and no effort made to bring him to trial. For the whole of this time, the police denied that he was in their custody and refused his friends access to him. At last, it was discovered that he was in their custody, and a writ of habeas corpus brought him before Judge Langley. In his complaint, he sets forth that he was arrested on February 22 and restrained of his personal liberty until the afternoon of February 25 by the defendants; that he was denied the right of access to counsel; and that he suffered greatly both in body and mind in consequence of the unlawful acts of the police. Gibbons claims that it will require the sum of $150 to compensate for the injuries inflicted upon him.
“For the whole of this time the police denied that he was in their custody and refused his friends access to him.”
This 1893 lawsuit highlights a long-standing tension between Seattle police accountability and the constitutional rights of the accused. Today, 'no-body' detentions and the right to counsel remain central battlegrounds in local criminal justice reform.
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