This past Sunday I observed, from a window in the downtown Seattle office building I work in, a street protest in progress. At around 3 PM a platoon of about two-dozen SPD bike officers gathered in front of the Social Security Administration building at the corner of Madison Street and Second Avenue. A half-hour later they were gone, and 15 minutes after that I observed a relatively small group of black-clad individuals, mostly white males, slowly making their way north on Third. As they approached Madison, the bike cops returned to their previous post. The group of protesters, tightly packed, turned west on Madison and eventually halted when they crossed Second, apparently to confront the police there. Nothing happened, and after a few minutes the protesters continued on and turned right on First and out of my line of view.
What happened next was quite a sight: there suddenly appeared heading west on Madison about 12 police cars and four paddy wagons. What was”fascinating” about this was that including the bike cops, who where now following the protesters, and the police in the cars, it appeared that the number of police actually outnumbered the marchers. Now, I understood that Saturday night there were similarly attired people (also with some carrying black umbrellas) out spraying anti-police graffiti, smashing windows and such. However, there was no news about what happened Sunday, no claims of damage, arrests or brawls. Perhaps this time it was “handled” differently by the police; perhaps this time showing up in force before these black-clad individuals did anything prevented another episode of mayhem, which usually tends to be centered in Capitol Hill, a neighborhood where this kind of activity is just part of the routine.
My impression was that the police in Saturday’s
events deliberately did not intervene in preventing property damage
because they knew it would make for suitable news coverage from their
perspective. Business owners whose establishments were damaged could at
least wonder why police chose not to intervene before it started, let alone while it was happening. A
video of the event showed not a single police officer in sight as
black-clad individuals were attempting to break windows; I suspect that
the police decided to allow the damage, because it was better “PR” for
them than just engaging in a brawl (that came afterward) where they
might only receive bad publicity.
On the other hand, they chose to “intervene” immediately in a clearly peaceful protest on Thursday because they knew that these protesters were “easier” to handle and rough-up. Unlike on Saturday, an army of police confronted the peaceful protesters and acted like they were the ones who were out-of-control. A streaming video showed an officer deliberately walking his bike over the head of a protester who was laying on the side of the road, wearing a white construction hat; the same officer then swung his bike around to strike an approaching protester; this was just a prelude to the police using tear gas and blast balls to disperse the protesters.
Interim police chief Adrian Diaz stated that "These calls for change are being drowned out by relentless violence, mayhem and illegal behavior” and that "If there are people going out and peacefully protesting, we will help facilitate that peaceful protest. But if they are coming to create this mayhem, we are going to address this mayhem." But the actions of police can be taken with a degree of cynicism as to their motives if and when they intervene. Who were the ones creating “mayhem” during the protest which appeared to be "peaceful" in intent?
I admit that I do not support mayhem of any sort in the name of “protest.” However, Seattle police are not “facilitating” peaceful protest, but acting like thugs because it is easy to beat on peaceful protesters to act out on their psychological issues. On the other hand, they have on numerous occasions appeared to be just bystanders when property damage is being done, and it is a fair question to ask if much of the “chaos” we see on television screens is as much a function of when, why and how police choose to act. It doesn’t help that no one trusts the mayor or the city to address police abuse of power, and the fact that people do not think anything will be done only increases the “fire” within.
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