By Norm Stamper
June 1, 2005
A Good Cop Wasted
The WTO debacle brought down Seattle Police Chief Norm
Stamper, one of America’s most progressive cops. Now he’s published a
memoir offering a frank look at his rise and fall, and the challenges
of reforming law enforcement. By Nina Shapiro MORE
"Snookered in Seattle: The WTO Riots" is a chapter from the
book Breaking Rank, copyright © 2005 by Norm Stamper, and appears by
permission of the publisher, Nation Books, a division of Avalon
Publishing Group Inc. The former Seattle Police chief will speak at
Town Hall Thurs., June 9, at 7:30 p.m., sponsored by Elliott Bay Book
Co.
I was "out of the loop" on the decision to invite the WTO
Ministerial Conference to Seattle (November 29-December 4, 1999). I’m
not sure how I would have voted anyway—for all I knew, "W-T-O" were the
call letters of a Cleveland radio station. I will say this, though:
Having your ass kicked so completely—by protestors, politicians, the
media, your own cops, colleagues from other agencies, and even a
(former) friend—does give cause for pause and reflection.
Local politicians were ecstatic that Seattle had beaten out San
Diego, the only other U.S. finalist for the honor of hosting the WTO
Conference. Our city of 530,000, with its police department of twelve
hundred cops, was delighted to accommodate eight thousand delegates,
the president of the United States, the secretary of state, dozens of
assorted other dignitaries, hundreds of reporters from throughout the
world, and tens of thousands of antiglobalization protesters.
No one was more tickled than Mayor Paul Schell. He wrote in an issue
of his "Schell Mail" A folksy missive from the mayor to thousands of
Seattleites, inside and outside government, issued as events dictated
or inspiration struck. His opponents accused the mayor of using "Schell
Mail" to advance a political agenda—particularly with respect to
mayoral dreams (including re-election), programs, and budget requests.
As one of his cabinet members, I found the Schell Mail messages
informative. (No. 39): "As the whole event comes to a peak during the
days of the actual Ministerial our streets and restaurants will be
filled with people from all over the world. Issues of global
significance will be addressed in our conference halls and public
spaces. School teachers will use local news to teach international
civics lessons. (And our many visitors will be bringing something like
$11 million of business to our town.)"
Schell had that very morning met with Michael Moore (no, not the
Michael Moore, but the secretary general of the WTO). He wrote of the
meeting, "Ex-Prime Minister of New Zealand, ex-construction worker,
with a background in labor, and an author, he’s got a good sense of
humor and a great mind. We had fun giving him a big round of ‚g-day,
mate.’" Then he turned serious: "Though there’s been a lot of talk
about protests and demonstrations, without question these are
overblown." Everyone (except us killjoys in law enforcement) seemed
unable to curb their enthusiasm about the event. Especially the
antiglobalization forces.
One city council member invited protesters from around the world to
come to Seattle to join in the "dialogue." He issued urgent public
appeals to Seattleites to find room in their homes to house the hordes.
Early in ’99, before pre-event speculation heated up, Ed Joiner, my
Operations chief, and I walked the few blocks down to the local FBI
office to learn what this WTO thing was all about from the "law
enforcement perspective." Special agent in charge "Birdie" Passanelli
and her fellow feds offered a primer. The World Trade Organization was
established in 1995 to "oversee rules of international trade, help
trade flow smoothly, settle trade disputes between governments, and
organize trade negotiations." Simple enough, I thought. An innocuous
mission with an emphasis on the bureaucratic and the diplomatic.
The WTO stood for the facilitation of free trade while its opponents
favored fair trade. "Free," "fair"—what the hell was the difference?
I boned up on the controversy. "Free trade," I came to understand,
means, essentially, the Clinton agenda—NAFTA, an opening of markets
throughout North America and, beyond that, the reduction or elimination
of trade barriers such as tariffs and quotas. Advocates claim that
global free trade would reduce poverty, encourage greater economic and
political freedom, increase corporate profits, and even enhance the
environment. The most succinct free-trade argument I found, invoking
Adam Smith, free enterprise, and the evils of socialism, came from
Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman in "The Case for Free Trade" (Hoover
Digest, 1997, No. 4).
In the view of its legions of disparate critics, however, free trade
means devastation of rain forests and other irreplaceable ecosystems;
loss of small American farms, businesses, and jobs to global
conglomerates, agribusiness, and foreign sweatshops; world hunger;
expansion of American imperialism; exploitation of laborers and the use
of child workers in Third World countries; political imprisonment; a
crushing subjugation of countries like Tibet; corrupt business
practices by the multinational corporations; abridgment of intellectual
properties; and denial of basic human and civil rights.
The last ministerial conference, in Geneva in May 1998, had
attracted thousands of demonstrators, and it had turned violent. But
President Clinton, a big supporter of the WTO, offered up the United
States anyway. He was probably thinking, No problem. I mean, how long
has it been since the country has seen violent political protest?
Twenty-five years? Thirty?
Seattle had handled, since the general strike of 1919 and through
the antiwar and civil rights uprisings of the sixties and seventies, an
unending stream of political demonstrations. Even in the mid-nineties
it was like the city was frozen in time—or, depending on your politics,
ahead of its time.
Seattle is a progressive town, one that can always muster several
hundred, or several thousand, to protest social service budget cuts or
police brutality or the conditions of migrant farm workers on the other
side of the Cascades. I felt privileged to live and work in a town
whose people still cared enough about social justice to get off their
butts and help bring it about.
We launched a regional planning effort on the heels of that FBI
meeting. Joiner headed up a "Public Safety Executive Committee"
consisting of ranking officials of SPD, King County Sheriffs, Seattle
Fire Department, Washington State Patrol, the FBI, and the United
States Secret Service. In all, twelve local, state, and federal
agencies plus sixteen collateral agencies joined the planning effort.
Joiner and his group formed subcommittees to address every
imaginable challenge: intelligence, venues protection, demonstration
management, access accreditation, transportation and escort management,
criminal investigations, communication, public information and media
relations, hazardous materials (including weapons of mass destruction),
fire and emergency medical services, tactics, logistics, personnel,
finance, and training.
Their mission? Put together a plan to protect people—conferees,
demonstrators, residents, business owners, shoppers, and dignitaries
(the secretary of state, the secretary of labor, the president himself,
maybe even Fidel Castro, who’d been rumored to be on the list of
uninvited but expected guests). And property—the streets, the
convention center, downtown hotels, Old Navy, Starbucks, Nordstrom,
Nike, the Gap, independent news and espresso stands …
My purpose as a cop, as a chief was to make our streets safe—for
everyone. When people asked me to describe the mission of SPD I gave
them a stock answer: to stop people from hurting other people. It
didn’t matter to me whether the danger was in a couple’s apartment in
Greenlake or on downtown streets jammed with demonstrators.
The police would, in the mayor’s words, "make sure that, for the
citizens of this city, life can go on more or less as usual." The
conference would be taking place at the peak of the holiday shopping
season. "The carousel will be up at Westlake, shoppers will fill the
stores, the holiday lights will be up, the PNB [Pacific Northwest
Ballet] will be dancing The Nutcracker. This is still Seattle in
December, after all," wrote the mayor.
Joiner presided over the most exhaustive event planning SPD had ever
done. Almost ten thousand hours of training was provided: over nine
hundred SPD personnel, through the rank of captain, went through an
initial nine-hour "crowd management" (riot control) class. Then weekly,
then twice-weekly squad drills. There were three four-hour
platoon-level exercises and a four-hour session with all platoons
drilling together. There was extra training on the department’s new
chemical agent protective masks, and eight-, sixteen-, and
twenty-four-hour classes on "crisis incident decision making" (a
disciplined approach to analyzing and responding to crises of all
kinds) for supervisors and commanders. Thirty SWAT officers traveled to
Ft. McClellan, Alabama, for a four-day course on WMDs. Several SWAT
supervisors and commanders attended an additional twenty-four hours of
WMD and incident command system training. The Secret Service gave two
days of dignitary protection and escort training to all motorcycle
officers from the five agencies that would be contributing cops to the
cause. The FBI and Secret Service ran two intensive tabletop exercises.
I monitored the training we provided to our officers. It started
with classroom instruction on the short history of the WTO, the protest
methods used in Geneva, and what they could expect, from best- to
worst-case scenarios. Next, the student-officers were herded into an
abandoned hangar at the old Sand Point military facility where they
were subjected—against the audible background of an actual riot (a loud
actual riot, recorded during recent political protests in Vancouver,
B.C.)—to simulated protest strategies and tactics, including violent
attacks. Back and forth the cops went, first as missile-chucking
"demonstrators," then in their real role as frontline cops confronting
those missiles. They rehearsed tactics, prepared mentally for things
likely to come.
All along, I’m thinking, We’ve got this sucker covered.
But my cops? They weren’t so confident. They appreciated the
training, they loved the new equipment—all that all-black "hard gear,"
from catcher-like shin guards to ballistic helmets, making them look
like Darth Vader. But they were convinced the city was in for a real
shitstorm.
There were some ominous signs—Internet organizing and mobilizing,
Ruckus Society training, anarchists threatening to descend on the city
and muck things up not only for the conferees but also for the throngs
of peaceful protesters.
I was familiar with such pre-event refrains from a segment of police
officers who always sound like Chicken Little, as well as the
shut-it-down braggadocio of the lunatic fringe of protesters. I’d heard
the voices of "extremists" many times in my career. Back in the
seventies in San Diego, a wild-eyed lieutenant warned of the day that
fundamentalist religious sects in the Middle East would migrate to our
shores and do bad things to innocent Americans. He prophesied acts of
terrorism, like blowing up airplanes and buildings … if you can
imagine that. The brass labeled him "Ol‘ Bombs and Rockets"—and kept
him away from the armory.
Of course there would be demonstrations downtown. Of course there’d
be knuckleheads who’d try to bait the officers. But even though Seattle
was a small city in a small county in a small state, I was confident my
PD was ready. Joiner had asked for help from state and regional
agencies, and gotten it. From everyone, that is, but Tacoma. Their
chief sent a letter declining to ante up any officers. I tracked him
down at a DV conference. "We really could use your help, James." James:
"We’re shorthanded." Me: "Aren’t we all, aren’t we all. But this thing
could really blow up on us." James: "I’ve got my own city to police."
Me: "But we’re always there for you, James. Sure you won’t change your
mind?" James: "No." Me: "Well, that really blows." James: "But if
things get out of hand up there you can count on us." Thanks, James.
Thanks a bunch. Washington State Patrol, King County Sheriffs, Port of
Seattle, Bellevue PD, Kent PD, and the combined forces of Auburn,
Renton, and Tukwila committed a total of fifty-three motorcycle cops,
seventy-five patrol officers, thirty-one SWAT officers, five bomb cops,
two communications/media personnel, and three explosives-detection K-9
teams. Washington State Patrol and King Country Sheriffs also committed
a total of 145 officers for "demonstration management" duty in the
event they were needed. All of this was to supplement the core forces
of Seattle’s police. On a normal day SPD would field about one hundred
cops at peak times. For the WTO we would have more cops on the streets
than at any time in PD history. In all, nine hundred SPD officers would
be suited up for WTO, all of them working twelve-hour shifts. It sure
sounded like a lot of cops.
Things were moving apace when shortly before the conference, Schell
insisted on visiting roll calls. He wanted to offer words of
encouragement, let the officers know he was there for them—and to tell
them to behave themselves. Maybe he thought they wouldn’t play nice
with our global visitors, that they might not show proper restraint if
provoked. I went with him to the roll calls, stood by his side. The
first few sessions were uneventful, if not dull. The mayor was a
bright, articulate politician but when it came to rallying the cops he
was no Knute Rockne.
The last roll call was at the West Precinct, in a spanking-new
facility, spacious, comfortable, and, unlike so many police facilities,
designed and built with cops and police work in mind. It had that
new-building smell, nice and fresh, and its opening had been a joyous
occasion for the West Precinct cops, mostly because of the pit they
were leaving. And because the plan called for free parking—just like PD
employees at the other precincts enjoyed. But Schell had changed all
that, and the cops were in a foul mood. In fact, they were lying in
wait as we walked in.
There they sat. A roomful of disgruntled cops staring at a
politician who had the nerve to ask them to make a good impression for
the all the world to see, even as he stuck it to them on the parking.
They glared, they griped, they grumbled. When one guy complained about
WTO, hizzoner finally snapped. "Look, if you can’t handle the job I’ll
find someone who can!"
Fighting the urge to throttle the guy, I stepped forward and
reminded the cops of my confidence in them. But the damage had been
done, and the mayor wasn’t through yet. Right after roll call and
within earshot of officers filing out of the room he turned to his
police chief, shook his head and said, "I sure don’t envy you your job."
The next day he said he was sorry. "Tell it to the cops," I said.
"I was tired," he said. "And hungry. I hadn’t eaten since lunch."
Well, sir, neither had I. And the cops you were talking to? They’re
headed for long hours with no sleep, no food, not even a place to pee.
As the conference approached, I began to have some of the same
doubts my officers felt. I took my concerns to Joiner, who brought me
back to reality. The first WTO ministerial conference had been held in
Singapore, which meant, of course, there had been exactly no
demonstrations. And the violence at that second one in Geneva? A
"European phenomenon." Besides, Seattle PD had had a ton of experience
and enjoyed a well-earned reputation for handling big political
protests (while still in San Diego I’d heard positive things about
SPD’s approach to demonstration management). Moreover, Joiner planned
to use only known and trusted SPD personnel at the most sensitive posts.
Ed Joiner had solid credentials as a strategist and tactician. His
planning team included some of the best minds on the department. Plus
every stakeholder, from the regional bus system to local hospitals, was
involved in the planning. Also comforting was the FBI’s threat
assessment of "low to moderate." (I later learned they were talking
about terrorist threats.)
And how’s this for reassurance? The head of the local Secret Service
office told the mayor and me at a meeting in Schell’s office just
moments before kickoff: "If things turn to shit it won’t be for of a
lack of planning." As a matter of fact, he had "never seen a better job
of planning and preparation."
Things started well. There were a couple of small-scale
demonstrations downtown on the Friday before the Monday conference
opening. On Saturday three daredevils rappelled themselves over a
bridge and hung an anti-WTO banner over Interstate 5 (they went to
jail). Sunday there were demonstrations on Capitol Hill, but what else
was new? Later that night a collection of anarchists broke into and
occupied an abandoned building near the West Precinct. Even that wasn’t
all that troubling—it allowed Joiner and his crews to keep an eye on
the comings and goings of the "outside agitators." Further, it would
have been problematic at that late moment to commit the dozens of
personnel necessary to raid the place, scoop up the trespassers, sort
out their undoubtedly counterfeit identities, and jail them—a decision
that was a mistake, in hindsight.
But, it wasn’t a bad weekend. All the more remarkable given that the
conference was gearing up at the same time the city was playing host to
the Seattle Marathon and a Seahawks game—both of which demanded much
from our force.
Early the next morning officers discovered evidence of a possible
break-in at the convention center. They’d been guarding the facility (a
sprawling, multistory building, with a complicated layout, in the heart
of downtown) throughout the night. But as Lt. Robin Clark, our SWAT
commander, showed me, it looked like someone could have slipped through
the outer perimeter, scaled a temporary wall at the back of the
facility, busted open a padlock, and entered the place.
This was serious. Police commanders had not taken as idle the threat
by militant protesters that they would, indeed, "shut down the WTO." It
wasn’t hard to imagine the mess they’d make if they’d breached security
of the main WTO venue. They could set off the fire sprinklers and flood
the interior, spraypaint choice antiglobalization slogans all over the
walls, unleash stink bombs. Or real bombs. Officers had to search the
whole convention center. So they did. Meticulously, with SWAT and
police dogs. It took hours.
The opening ceremonies were delayed, and a few delegates got their
noses bent out of shape—mostly because they got yelled at a good bit by
throngs of raggedy demonstrators as they stood in line in their western
business suits and native attire. One of them, a "minister," pulled a
gun on some demonstrators.
A couple of hours later everyone was safe and snug inside the
building. We breathed a collective sigh of satisfaction, and I returned
to the streets to resume my "roving."
In the Incident Command System, which we had adopted (and trained
for) long before WTO entered the picture, the chief of police has, by
design, no "operational" role. His or her name and title might appear
at the top of official documents, but if you searched those documents
for a job description you’d find none.
There are compelling reasons to keep police chiefs out of the
operations arena. They are simply too busy, across a broad range of
organizational and community duties, to master the kind of continuously
updated specialized expertise needed to handle a SWAT incident, a crime
scene, or a major demonstration.
The last thing you want is a police chief actually running the show. So, I "roved."
I walked the streets, encouraged my cops at their posts, stopped by
the various hotels set aside for WTO delegates and dignitaries, and
moved in and out of the convention center. I spent time with my
commanders in the Multi-Agency Command Center (MACC), the Seattle
Police Operations Center (SPOC) next door, and the Emergency Operations
Center (EOC) at the fire station at Fifth and Battery. (My four
assistant chiefs, with Joiner taking the point, were split between the
MACC and the EOC, each pulling twelve-hour shifts, for around-the-clock
coverage.) I received regular updates and teamed up with the mayor and
the fire chief to make frequent announcements to, and to field
questions from, the huge international press corps. One of my answers
at one of the press conferences would infuriate my cops, but that
wouldn’t come until later.
The first press briefing on Monday was upbeat. I had just come from
an intersection clogged with demonstrators. David Horsey, two-time
Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist with the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, had been standing next to me as a local protester
approached. She told us she’d traveled downtown for two reasons: to
protest globalization, and to keep people from hurling insults and/or
bottles at her cops. She wanted me to know how much she respected and
admired the job our officers were doing. It was one of those lovely
peace-love-harmony moments. I envisioned the next morning’s political
cartoon, and felt all warm and fuzzy.
Veteran cops told me they’d never seen so many people on the
streets. There was sea of sea turtles and anti-WTO signs, choruses of
chanting, and street theater performances, replete with colorfully
costumed actors on stilts playing out the various points of opposition
to globalization. That night, thousands of protesters filed into Key
Arena where the Sonics and the Storm play their basketball. They heard
speeches from local politicians, including the mayor (who at one point
bleated, "Have fun but please don’t hurt my city") and various protest
leaders and organizers. There were songs by Laura Love and other
politically active musicians. Day One ended peacefully.
Which was in stark contrast to the way Day Two began. Starting at
two in the morning (those protesters needed a union!), demonstrators
began assembling, quietly, but not unobserved (cops do work 24/7).
Throughout the night the MACC and the EOC fielded reports from officers
monitoring the increasing size of the crowds. By five-thirty a large
group had formed at Victor Steinbrueck Park just north of Pike Place
Market. Sprinkled within the crowd were gas masks and chemical
munitions. At seven-thirty large groups began marching to the
convention center from five different locations. Between seven-thirty
and eight o’clock, seven distinct, large-scale disturbances erupted
within a two-block radius. At nine minutes after nine the incident
commander authorized the use of chemical irritants. One minute later he
put out the call for mutual aid.
I stood in the rain at the intersection of Sixth and Union and
witnessed a single line of ten King County Sheriff’s deputies holding
off more than a hundred raucous demonstrators who were trying to
penetrate the underground parking at the Sheraton. The militants
taunted the deputies, pushed up against them. I worried for the thin
tan line, the tiny handful of county cops who rarely saw this kind of
"big-city" action. And realized, for the first time, that we didn’t
have nearly enough cops to get the job done.
Moments later hundreds of demonstrators surged into the middle of
the intersection and took a seat. They completely choked off Sixth
Avenue up to University, a block east. If a police car, a fire truck,
or an aid car had to get to an emergency in or around any of the
high-rise buildings it would have been impossible. Police commanders
had spent months negotiating with protest leaders, but this wasn’t in
the plan. There was no choice but to declare an unlawful assembly and
clear them out. Which wouldn’t be pretty, given what the sitters did
next.
In response to the command to leave the intersection, protesters
locked arms, making themselves one massive knot of humanity. Only force
would unlock them from one another. A field commander told them they
were in violation of the law, and that they would be arrested if they
didn’t leave the intersection. He did it by the numbers: He used the
proper language, stationed cops around the perimeter to verify that the
bullhorned warning could be heard, and warned them and warned them and
warned them. Then he warned them again. Then he gassed them.
Why didn’t he and his squads just wade in, pull the protesters
apart, and haul them off to a prisoner transportation unit? This
particular demonstration wasn’t violent, after all, but a classic civil
disobedience tactic. But there simply weren’t enough cops to pluck them
off one at a time. And violence had broken out at several other
locations around the convention center.
At noon, a scheduled AFL-CIO march left Seattle Center in the shadow
of the Space Needle and headed downtown. It grew from twenty thousand
to forty thousand on the way, and soon converged with another ten
thousand demonstrators already on the streets of downtown. Suddenly, my
minuscule police force seemed microscopic.
Even the reinforcements from other agencies, streaming in and en
route, struck little confidence into the hearts of police staffers. Our
cops were clearly in trouble. The department had co-planned with
organizers from the AFL-CIO and other groups, and had gotten assurances
that they would largely police themselves. These were honorable people
who’d kept their word in the past. One could only hope they’d be able
to hold their own against interlopers.
Those hopes were dashed when even before the tail end of the march
reached downtown, self-described anarchists and Beavis-and-Butthead
recreational rioters unleashed a round of criminal acts.
Thugs in uniform—black with black bandannas—popped out of the
throngs of peaceful protesters and chucked bricks and bottles at cops,
and newspaper racks through shop windows. They even smashed a Starbucks
window and ripped off bags of Arabica, Colombian, and French roast (a
hanging offense in Seattle). Then they scurried back into the crowd
where they cowered behind senior citizens, moms with jogging strollers,
and kids dressed up in those cute little sea turtle costumes.
I walked into a hastily called meeting at the MACC, Joiner’s
windowless headquarters. The mayor was there, so was Washington
governor Gary Locke, Chief Annette Sandberg of the Washington State
Patrol, King County Sheriff Dave Reichert, and a couple of feds who
were in town to do advance work for the president’s visit. Clinton was
due in late that night. The meeting had one item on its agenda: whether
to declare a state of emergency and call in National Guard troops.
Tension in the room was palpable, as you might expect with a city under
siege. But there was also an undercurrent of something else.
The place reeked of fear. It couldn’t have been a fear for our own
safety—we were, for the moment, safely hunkered in and bunkered down,
far away from the din of battle. So what were we afraid of? I can’t
speak for the others, but here’s what I was afraid of: (1) My cops were
out there on the streets, taking a licking; (2) nonviolent protesters,
store owners, office workers, and shoppers faced a clear and present
danger; (3) the president of the United States, leader of the free
world, wouldn’t be able to address the ministers—if he could get in to
the city at all; (4) my beloved city looked more like Beirut, or
Baghdad; and (5) I didn’t know what the hell to do, other than close
down the city and call in the National Guard.
Mostly, I was afraid I’d failed. I had let down a lot of people I
cared about. Sitting next to me in the MACC was Sheriff Reichert who
wanted nothing more than to get back out on the streets to kick some
ass and take some names. Reichert, angry at our insufficiently
"aggressive" plan for dealing with the demonstrators and disgusted by
the dithering in the room, leaned over and whispered, "Let’s just throw
the damn politicians out of the room." I liked the sound of that, but
we needed them: the mayor to put the official request for a declaration
of a "state of emergency" to the governor, the governor to act on it.
Joiner, still in charge in the MACC, remained calm and cool. He held
out for accurate updates from the field. Through his own "shock and
awe" at what had unfolded that day, he was still very much the kind of
operations commander you want calling the shots.
Now, however, everybody wanted to run the show—or at least judge it.
Sandberg sighed audibly, rolled her eyes, and murmured under her
breath when the conversation took a turn she didn’t like. The feds
migrated to a corner of the room, mumbled, crossed their arms, put
their heads together and shook them vigorously. (Paraphrasing, their
position was: Just clear the fucking streets, for God’s sake! We don’t
care what it takes. We got the Big Guy touching down in a matter of
hours. POTUS (the Secret Service abbreviation for "President of the
United States") shouldn’t be exposed to this … this riffraff.) And
Reichert? The poor guy was apoplectic, his blood boiling over every
time Schell opened his mouth.
Those individuals most capable of bringing reason to the table and
advice to the decision makers, like West Precinct captain Jim Pugel,
weren’t in the room. They were, by popular demand, out there on the
streets. Pugel was doing a hell of a job under hellish conditions. He
and other field commanders reported in regularly, but the situation
kept changing, of course, from one minute to the next.
So there we were, a roomful of leaders, accustomed to running
things, taking risks, making decisions, getting things done. As
individuals we made things happen. Now we were suddenly thrust together
as a body, as a team of leaders—though hardly a cohesive one. It
occurred to me that planning and preparation for WTO should have
included at least one tabletop exercise for the "rovers"—the very
people in that room.
At 3:52 the mayor declared a civil emergency. The governor called
out the National Guard. In a script that could have been written by
Joseph Heller, Joiner had asked in advance that the National Guard be
placed on alert. We can’t do that unless a state of emergency exists.
But we’re trying to prevent a "state of emergency." Well, we can’t
mobilize unless a state of emergency exists. Can’t you just have your
people standing by, say, in Kent or SeaTac? Nope. Have your emergency
first, then give us a call. A curfew, which covered most of the
downtown area, was imposed for that evening and the next.
I left the MACC and headed back out on the streets. If anything, the
situation was worse. Police officers were being pelted with an amazing
array of missiles: traffic cones, rocks, jars, bottles, ball bearings,
sticks, golf balls, teargas canisters, chunks of concrete, human urine
shot from high-powered squirt guns. Gas-masked militants fired their
own teargas at the cops, hurled ours back at us, and flung barricades
through plate glass windows. Some moron(s) flattened all four tires on
a herd of parked police cars. By nightfall it was no better. Most of
the action simply moved to Capitol Hill where innocent caf diners got
gassed along with rioters.
But at least POTUS made it in to town safely. At about one-thirty in
the morning he was put to bed at his favorite Seattle hotel, the Westin.
At five o’clock Wednesday morning, having established a "police
perimeter" to keep demonstrators from getting too close to the WTO
venues, officers observed people carrying crowbars, rocks, masonry
hammers, and bipods and tripods (from which to suspend intrepid
activists high in the air, in the middle of intersections). The cops
confiscated what they could and began arresting the first bunch of the
hundreds who would be jailed that day. Against a backdrop of full-scale
urban rioting, police officers and Secret Service agents escorted our
national leader and his entourage from one venue to another—from the
Westin to the Bell Harbor Conference Center on Elliott Bay to the Four
Seasons Hotel. Officers continued to take a pelting but POTUS was never
touched.
By mid-morning the ACLU filed for a temporary restraining order in
U.S. District Court seeking to overturn the "police perimeter." A
police commander had to break away from his duties to summarize the
department’s defense of the tactic, but it paid off. The court denied
the request. (As if the demonstrators were paying any attention at all
to the so-called "no protest zone.")
All that day and into the night, with action shifting once again to
Capitol Hill, cops fought the fight, ducking often as protesters
chucked unopened cans of soup and other objects. A platoon commander’s
car was surrounded by a fun-loving crowd that jumped up and down on the
vehicle, then attempted to flip it over. (The lieutenant, who had
himself been an antiwar demonstrator at the University of Washington
back in the days, told me later, "I’ve been on every kind of call there
is, Chief. But I’ve never been more scared than I was that night. I
thought sure they were going to pull me out of the car, grab my gun,
and … and who knows what.") Officers dispersed that group with gas
and rescued their boss.
Moments later an employee at a gas station on Broadway called 911 to
report that the station had been taken over by rioters who were filling
small bottles with gasoline. One officer witnessed an individual
dressed in black carrying a Molotov cocktail. A crowd of three hundred
to four hundred broke off from the Broadway festivities and moved to
the 1100 block of East Pine where they threatened to take over SPD’s
East Precinct.
At two-fifty Thursday morning the precinct was still under siege,
the crowd having grown to somewhere between a thousand and fifteen
hundred. The officers protecting it were no longer surprised by the
pelting they took, or by the infinite variety of projectiles.
A combination of chemical agents and rubber pellets finally secured
the peace. The building, which contained weapons, injured police
officers, and prisoners, was never breached.
Downtown at dawn was much quieter than it had been the past two
days, a portent of positive things to come. Clinton flew out of town at
ten, and the "no protest" perimeter was shrunk. A crowd circled King
County Jail at about one in the afternoon (triggering a lockdown), but
other than that it was peaceful. Most of the violent demonstrators were
either in jail, lying low, or scurrying out of town. As day turned to
night the crowd continued to hang around the jail, listening to
speeches from protest leaders, criminal defense attorneys, and other
activists. At seven-thirty they split up, half of them sticking around,
the other half, under police escort, heading up to Capitol Hill where
they continued their mostly peaceful ways.
On Friday, the final day of the now-truncated WTO conference, the
drama ended. (If the demonstrators had been shouting "Truncate it!
Truncate it!" instead of "Shut it down!" they would have achieved their
goal.) All that remained of the protests was a hastily negotiated,
legally sanctioned march by organized labor. It drew a decent crowd,
maybe eight hundred to a thousand, but by then the focus had shifted
from the WTO to claims of police brutality and to condemnation of the
curfew and the perimeter. At its conclusion the marchers headed back to
the Labor Temple.
A hundred or so of them broke from the group, marched over to Fifth
Avenue, and swarmed the main entrance to the Westin—did they think
POTUS was still inside? (Protesters earlier in the week had effectively
made hostages of a furious Secretary of State Madeline Albright and
U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky—both of whom were unable
to leave their hotel rooms for the better part of a day.) Several of
the demonstrators chained themselves to the front door of the hotel. It
was a lame tactic—the Westin had other obvious entrances but there were
too few protesters left to cover those doors. I walked into one of
those other entrances and took the elevator to the twenty-first floor
where a suite had been set up for officers assigned to dignitary
protection at the hotel. I helped myself to a bottled water and walked
over to the window. It was dark outside. A good-size crowd had gathered
to cheer on this last hurrah. We could hear the muffled chants from
behind the thick glass. A couple of hours later, the chains came off
and what was left of the crowd either went home or over to the jail to
shout words of encouragement to their imprisoned brothers and sisters.
The riot was over.
Saturday, December 4. I made one last round of the still-operating
venues, stopping finally at the MACC where I informed the deputy mayor
I that I was turning in my badge.
My decision made headlines. And a Horsey cartoon which had the chief
of police falling on his sword. Its caption: "I figured I’d do it
myself before someone did it for me."
It took great self-discipline for me not to blurt out publicly what
I thought of the mayor. But had I done it, it would not have been for
the things the mayor was being accused of (hubris, navet, lack of
foresight—all of which, if it fit him, also applied to me). In fact, I
strongly believe that Schell got a raw deal for his role in the battle.
It just wasn’t his fault, any of it. The guy wasn’t a cop, or a
tactician, or a "demonstration management" expert. Hell, he’d only been
a politician for two years. But the mayor had acted the fool on other
fronts, and it was those occasions that had riled me. First and
foremost were his reckless remarks to and about Sheriff Reichert.
Riding around at the height of the rioting with King County
Executive Ron Sims, Reichert had observed an act of vandalism. Telling
Sims he’d seen enough, he bailed out of the car and gave chase. He
didn’t catch the suspects, but his actions produced a satisfying sound
bite on the evening news—and endeared him to my cops, who had plenty of
other reasons to favor the county lawman over their own chief.
As the mayor and the sheriff walked out of a hall following one of
Clinton’s speeches, Schell cornered Reichert. He told him he didn’t
appreciate the sheriff "acting like a fucking hero out there," or words
to that effect. He blocked Reichert’s path, and continued to berate
him. The sheriff ignored the mayor, and pushed past him. Schell, always
the gentleman, shouted after him, "I’ll personally destroy you!" The
many witnesses to the mayor’s actions were not impressed.
After the dust had settled, Schell presided over a special cabinet
meeting. He praised all the city departments who’d played any kind of a
role during the week (especially the crews who’d cleaned up around
Westlake Park over the weekend and made downtown sparkle once again).
He thanked us for our personal sacrifices, and so on. It was a gracious
statement. Then he said, "You know, everyone did a terrific job under
incredible stress. Everyone except our lunatic sheriff." Running a Bush
"Mini-Me" campaign—support for the war in Iraq, opposition to
reproductive rights, support for a constitutional amendment banning gay
marriage, opposition to federally funded sex education, support for oil
drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, opposition to
stem-cell research—the "lunatic" won election in November 2004 to the
eighth Congressional District from Washington.
I cornered the deputy mayor after the meeting, Schell having scooted
off. "I’m sick and tired of your boss’s character assassinations." I
told her he was acting like a "narcissistic sociopath," and urged her
to put a muzzle on him.
"I know, I know," she said. "He’s been under such pressure …"
It wasn’t that I didn’t understand. The week had taken a personal
toll on everyone. I, myself, had gone home to my condo in the middle of
the night, four nights in a row with only enough time to shower, air
out my gas-saturated uniform, and try to squeeze in a couple of hours‘
sleep. Bone tired, I found it next to impossible to get to sleep. Some
nights I could still hear the whoop-whoop-whoop of Guardian One, the
sheriff’s helicopter I’d ridden in with the governor in order to get an
eagle’s-eye view of the proceedings. As with a song you can’t get out
of your head, I’d be wracked by a rerun of the day’s other noises:
drums, police whistles, chants, screams, rocks landing on police
helmets and on the face shields of our horses, dueling bullhorns, glass
shattering. I replayed over and over in my mind the frantic radio call
of one of my mounted officers as the cop reported being pulled from his
horse. I’d responded to that one, Code 2, turning onto Pine Street just
in time to catch a faceful of CS gas.
With eyes shut I saw Technicolor images of bipods and tripods,
looters, Dumpster fires, intersection bonfires. I saw cops being baited
and assaulted. And I saw a cop kicking a retreating demonstrator in the
groin before shooting him in the chest with a rubber pellet. That
particular scene, caught by a television camera, was flashed around the
globe, over and over, Rodney King-style.
Then there was the cop who, spotting two women in a car videotaping
the action, ordered one of them to roll down her window. When she
complied, he shouted, "Film this!" and filled their car with mace.
If Paul Schell wasn’t responsible for this mess, who was? I was. The
chief of police. I thought we were ready. We weren’t. I thought protest
leaders would play by the rules. They didn’t. I thought we were smarter
than the anarchists. We weren’t. I thought I’d paid enough attention to
my cops‘ concerns. I hadn’t. All in all, I got snookered. Big time.
To this day I feel the pangs of regret: that my officers had to
spend long hours on the streets with inadequate rest, sleep, pee
breaks, and meals, absorbing every form of threat and abuse imaginable
(including, for a number of officers, a dose of food poisoning, from
eating vittles that had been sitting out all day); that Seattle’s
businesses were hurt during the rampaging; that the city and the police
department I loved lost a big chunk of collective pride and
self-confidence; that peaceful protestors failed to win an adequate
hearing of their important antiglobalization message; and, yes, that
Paul Schell’s dream of a citywide "dialogue" had been crushed.
When I think back to that week in 1999, which I do probably too
often, one event stands out. It’s three in the morning. I’ve just
walked into my darkened condo on Lower Queen Anne.
I check for phone messages. There’s only one. I’m sure it’s from one
of my cops. Friendly and jovial on Day One, the officers had joked with
me, shown off their new equipment, passed along compliments they’d
heard from protesters. But this was Day Three, and now they were
shooting me nasty looks. Why?
Word had spread through the ranks that I’d answered "yes" to a
reporter who wanted to know if I’d seen any police conduct that
disturbed me. Well, I sure as hell had, and I wasn’t about to lie about
it. That I’d lavishly praised the sterling performance of my officers
at a string of press conferences made no difference to many of my cops.
I’d broken an important provision of "the Code." Like the Republicans‘
"Eleventh Amendment," police officers are not to speak ill of one
another—even if one of them has assaulted an unarmed, retreating
demonstrator. Or maced innocent women. In neither of these incidents
was a Seattle police officer involved. The "kicker-shooter" belonged to
Tukwila PD, the "macer" was Reichert’s. Both agencies responded
immediately, taking their cops off the streets—and later imposing stiff
penalties.
I punch in the code and retrieve the message. It’s not from a cop,
after all. It’s from a friend. A doctor friend I have dinner with
several times a year. I sigh. Thank God, I can use a little support
right about now.
"I can’t believe what I’m seeing on TV," says the friend’s voice,
dripping with venom. "Your cops are worse than the fucking Gestapo. I’m
totally repulsed that you’re allowing this. You’re a sorry, miserable
excuse of a human being and I’m appalled that you’re our chief."
But at the end of the week there was this: My cops hadn’t killed
anyone. Given fatigue, provocation, and ample legal justification to
employ lethal force on numerous occasions, they’d held their fire. The
Battle produced not a single death (and fewer than a hundred injuries,
the most serious of which was a broken arm).
The Battle of Seattle was an important event in the history of
American social and political protest. Whereas ten years ago a thousand
people might have shown up to protest the WTO, there were fifty times
that number on the streets of Seattle in the fall of ’99. I believe
that’s a testament not only to the power of the Internet (which has all
but replaced posters on fences, campus leafleting, and telephone trees
as the primary means of organizing and mobilizing protest) but also to
broad, intense antiglobalization sentiment and to a deep mistrust of
our government’s policies. Witness the awesome numbers of protesters
who took to the streets locally (as well as globally) to protest
America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Seattle was, in the end, just too damned small to pull it off. If
you’re thinking about hosting such an event you need to be able to
count your cops in the thousands or tens of thousands, not hundreds.
Hell, the city wouldn’t have had enough cops had we called in every
officer in the state.
We learned many lessons from the Battle, foremost of which are: (1)
line up as much help in advance as you possibly can, then find more;
(2) plan for "force multipliers" (i.e., volunteers), but don’t become
overreliant on them; and (3) keep demonstrators at a much greater
distance from official venues. No matter how much they bitch about it.
And finally, my gift to every police executive and mayor in cities
the size of Seattle’s: Think twice before saying yes to an organization
whose title contains any of the following words: world, worldwide,
global, international, multinational, bilateral, trilateral,
multilateral, economic, monetary, fiscal, finance, financial, fund,
bank, banking, or trade.
