Seattle police violated rights, report says

An ACLU assessment of last fall's WTO meeting faults the city's preparations

AP 6jul00

SEATTLE -- City police should have known enough to keep an open passage for World Trade Organization delegates during protests last fall, an American Civil Liberties Union report concludes.

Instead, according to "Out of Control," a 71-page report prepared for formal release Wednesday, bungling resulted in violation of the First Amendment rights of delegates and protesters.

Despite months of warnings from the Seattle Fire Department, law enforcement agencies and protest organizers, demonstrations and disorders overwhelmed police at the outset of the meetings at the end of November.

"Realizing it had lost control of the situation, the city then overreacted," the report said.

The report, based largely on anonymous accounts from more than 500 people who completed a form on the ACLU's Web site, is one of a number of studies of the disorders that marred the international gathering held Nov. 30-Dec. 3.

Last week, the first of three City Council citizen panels examining various aspects of the issue criticized Mayor Paul Schell and council members for failing to ask more questions before bidding to host the gathering.

This week Schell is expected to release the second half of a report by a law enforcement consultant he hired to assess the city's response, and the National Lawyers Guild also is expected to issue a report on civil rights complaints.

Police and Schell administration officials would not comment on the ACLU report Tuesday. Ed Joiner, former assistant police chief, has admitted he underestimated the number of protesters willing to block the streets and thus left the area without enough officers to establish clear-passage corridors.

The study accused police of violating the free-speech rights of protesters by using tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets to try to clear the streets and by establishing a 25-block no-protest zone in the downtown area.

"The no-protest zone was clearly unrelated to any real security problem," asserted Kathleen Taylor, executive director of the ACLU's state chapter. "That's obvious because all you had to do was dress up nice to get through it."

At the same time, by failing to create "corridors or security perimeters" for passage to the opening meeting, "city officials did not protect conference delegates' right to assemble," the report said.

"If the police had prepared properly before the demonstrators converged on Seattle, they could have found a middle ground between heavy-handedness and naively hoping for the best," the report concluded.