Officer who arrested man using golf club as cane fired

SEATTLE — Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole has fired an officer involved in the arrest of a 69-year-old man who refused to drop a golf club he was carrying on a city sidewalk.

Officer Cynthia Whitlatch was served Tuesday with a termination notice for policy violations involving bias, abuse of police discretion and escalation of a situation involving William Wingate and a golf club he was using as a cane in July 2014.

O’Toole said in a Tuesday letter to Seattle Mayor Ed Murray that based on an investigation into the incident she is firing Whitlatch. O’Toole says the 2014 case should have been resolved without any confrontation.

Whitlatch had been reassigned to desk duty after the incident and after O’Toole learned that Whitlatch had made troubling Facebook comments regarding race.

Whitlatch is white; Wingate is black.