Some eyewitness accounts of last Monday's fatal U-District encounter between Shawn Maxwell, 31, and a circle of SPD officers are raising troubling questions about the shooting.

Most key aspects of the incident seem beyond dispute. An African American man in his 30s initially fled from an attempted routine traffic stop. After a brief chase, he pulled over on 7th Ave. NE, the street that runs parallel and next to the east side of I-5.

There, he took off on foot, officers in pursuit into a nearby alley, only to re-emerge a few minutes later, surrounded quickly by what eyewitnesses variously describe as between ten and twelve white officers.

At this point, according to police and initial media accounts, the man was brandishing "a small sword" (later downsized) at officers. After an initial shot from a Taser weapon (revised by SPD the following day to "two shots") failed to subdue him, the man "moved toward officers in a threatening manner" (different accounts say he walked or lunged), and was shot at least four times by two different officers. The man later died at Harborview Medical Center from his wounds.

Several of the closest civilian witnesses, however, have been disputing the story; some in interviews with me (published in last Wednesday's Seattle Weekly), some in accounts published that same Wednesday in the P-I.

Both the house immediately across the street from the shooting and its neighbor are occupied by what resident Justin Pogue self-describes as "anarchist punk kids." Housemate Matt Leonard organized last fall's Nov. 30 anti-WTO Secluded Alley Works concert that SPD shut down, and as he arrived home Monday afternoon he thought that the huge police presence meant his own house was being raided. But it was far worse.

Pogue is the only one of these six or seven eyewitnesses who is willing to talk on the record, though all say they are willing to testify to what they saw. And their accounts, like those of many of their neighbors, differ from SPD's in several critical ways. Among them:

* Pogue says he and other witnesses heard what sounded like a pop, followed by four gunshots, in rapid succession. The first, Pogue thinks, was the Taser, though he concedes that it could have been a fifth shot that "sounded odd." But regardless, they and other neighbors agree, almost no time elapsed between the failed attempt to subdue the man with the Taser and the fatal shots.

* Most importantly, all accounts agree that the officers closest to the suspect were "six or seven yards" away, with the officers forming a 180-degree semicircle around the suspect and an I-5 sound wall behind him. (A taser's effective range is 21 feet.)

Pogue and others are adamant that, in his words, "I didn't see him advance toward [the] cops with that weapon"--and that even though from his angle, he could have failed to see a small motion toward police, Maxwell fell exactly where he had been standing during the confrontation. And even more critically, says Pogue (with other witnesses agreeing), "His back was turned to the cops. He was shot from a rear view angle when they began to shoot." Both witnesses from Pogue's house and others interviewed by the P-I insist Maxwell made no motion with his weapon toward police.

Much still is not known or is in dispute. According to a Seattle Times report, at least one neighbor may have videotaped the shooting. Regardless, in the wake of past controversial SPD shootings of black men by white officers--and of the current Police Guild no-confidence vote over the disciplining of an officer for (among other things) using racial slurs against Asian-American jaywalkers last summer--the circumstances of last Monday's death have already spurred renewed calls for greater police accountability.

The response of official Seattle has been predictable; said embattled police chief, Gil Kerlikowske, has praised the officers' professionalism and restraint. (One presumes sadistically skinning the suspect alive in a back room would have been "unprofessional.") It's not only rather frightening, and yet another widening of the ever-expanding chasm between whites and non-whites in this city, but it's terribly unfair to the honest, conscientious cops here who are also now targets of even more hatred and paranoia. And this is happening in city after city after city across America.

This time, even the normally quiescent local NACCP chapter (the same group whose parent organization last week gave its highest award to Condolezza Rice) is calling for a federal civil rights investigation--federal because in over 130 straight cases of King County law enforcement officers causing civilian deaths locally, dating back three decades, not once have officers been found to have acted inappropriately, let alone faced criminal charges. And many of those shootings, especially in recent years, have been of armed or unarmed black men. There is very little faith that this case, unlike all of the others, will somehow get a fair hearing. And the OPA (Office of Police Apologia) that now serves as this city's pathetic substitute for police accountability is laughably ineffective, serving only to "audit" whatever investigations police choose to make of themselves--with no subpoena power. Police officers have by far the most power of any public employees, and by far the least outside accountability.

Instead, within SPD--as Kerlikowske's comments suggest--the fastest way to become a hero on the force is to shoot a black man. Afterwards, the chief will praise you, the Seattle Police Officers' Guild will give you an Officer of the Month award as an expression of admiration, and all of civic Seattle will scramble to justify the murder. In Maxwell's case, police now point to a previous incident in Georgia where he fled from a traffic stop, dragging an officer down the road in the process. But does that show that Maxwell feared police (correctly, it seems), or does it prove that even in racist, redneck Georgia, cops aren't nearly as quick to shoot black men as they are in Seattle?

Pogue acknowledges that he and the other young witnesses weren't "...very fond of [SPD] before, like from the stuff they did at WTO. But it shocked me to see how easy it is to be shot and killed by SPD. I really fear the SPD now." He wonders why, given that the man was cornered, officers could not have tried the taser again, or, with all the arriving backup cops, deploy some other method to subdue the suspect short of lethal force. "It seemed like a really unjust death. I hope not only that they lose their badges, but that they are criminally charged for the murder of that man."