From [HERE] and [HERE] Federal prosecutors are recommending a year in jail for a former Tukwila police officer who plead guilty to a misdemeanor for pepper-spraying a handcuffed patient in a hospital emergency room in 2011.

If U.S. District Judge John Coughenour accepts the government’s sentencing recommendation in its prosecution of Nick Hogan, it would be the first time in recent memory that a Western Washington police officer was jailed for using excessive force on the job, a criminal civil-rights violation.

Hogan, a white man, pleaded guilty in November to a single count of deprivation of rights under color of law. He will be sentenced at 9 a.m. Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

Hogan had responded to a fight in Tukwila on May 21, 2011, and arrested a man identified as “M.S.” who had suffered a split lip during the altercation. Hogan transported him to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle to have the injury treated before booking him into jail. The victim identified by the initials M.S., is African-American according to Tukwila police internal-affairs documents on the incident. [MORE]

According to reports, M.S. was verbally abusive but was handcuffed in the back of Hogan’s patrol car.

Nevertheless, according to internal-affairs documents obtained by The Seattle Times and federal court papers, Hogan resorted to force, and admitted to using several hard “knee-strikes” to the handcuffed man’s head while he was trying to remove him from the back seat of his patrol car, 

In the ER triage area, Hogan slammed him against a wall in the waiting room and shoved him down a hallway, where M.S. fell. Hospital security officials — who would later complain to Tukwila about Hogan’s actions — took M.S. into a small, curtained bay and restrained him hand and foot on a gurney.

 The court documents say M.S. was put into four-point restraints on a gurney, and he and Hogan were taken to a curtained treatment cubicle, where M.S. reportedly continued to be verbally abusive and threatened to sue Hogan.

Hogan grabbed the retrained man by the neck and sprayed him in the eyes, mouth and face with” pepper spray and made no effort to assist him afterward by washing off his face. [MORE]

“Harborview Security entered the room and observed Hogan calmly drinking water” which would have been used to wash off the powerful irritant.

M.S. was still restrained hand and foot with “teary, red, swollen eyes and snot running down his face” the document says.

Hogan told the security guard that M.S. had been “mouthy.” 

The reports state all of this was captured on hospital video.

M.S., in a recorded statement to Tukwila investigators, acknowledged that he was being verbally abusive to Hogan, but claimed it was because the officer was being rough. He claimed he never resisted, either in the back of the patrol car or in the ER. He also said he was never able to sit up on the gurney because of the restraints.