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Chaos closes downtown
Schell orders a curfew; National Guard called in
Wednesday, December 1, 1999
By SCOTT SUNDE
Withstanding tear gas, rubber pellets and nightsticks, thousands of protesters faced down the World Trade Organization and police in Seattle yesterday, forcing authorities to order a curfew and call out the National Guard.
After night fell, police swept through downtown, pushing protesters out of the curfew area with a blanket of tear and pepper gas. The battle continued late into the night on Capitol Hill.
By sunrise, police had declared a no-demonstration zone around the WTO convention site and pledged to immediately arrest any protesters who entered the area. (See story on today's developments.)
Also see our WTO photo galleries.
Protesters all along planned to occupy downtown and to halt the opening ceremonies. One protester summed up the day in white paint on a bank's picture window, writing "We win."
The unrelenting, daylong street battles prompted Gov. Gary Locke to call out the National Guard.
But when asked whether police were in control of the demonstrations, Mayor Paul Schell -- who declared a state of civil emergency and the 7 p.m.-7:30 a.m. curfew -- said yes.
"This administration had people who marched in the '60s -- the last thing I wanted was to be mayor of a city that called in the National Guard," Schell said.
Then he nudged Stamper, who hemmed before saying, "From a public-safety standpoint, yes."
Still, protesters raged through the streets, while gangs used the cover of chaos to commit strong-arm robberies and loot some businesses, including a Starbucks at Sixth and Stewart.
In addition to 200 or more riot-trained guardsmen who are to deploy today, Locke also ordered 300 more state troopers to Seattle.
This is the first time in modern history that the National Guard has been called into Seattle, and the curfew is apparently the first since World War II, when a U.S. Army general ordered Japanese Americans off the streets at night.
Stamper defended his 1,200 officers.
"Our police officers, in my judgment, did an extraordinary job against all odds."
But Ed Joiner, assistant chief, said officers may have waited too long before taking action.
While the police had been in negotiations with dozens of protest groups for months, the chief said the city underestimated the number who hadn't asked permission to demonstrate and were bent on anarchy.
He said the National Guard was a "last-ditch" contingency.
Police made 60 arrests by midnight, but Schell rejected suggestions that mass arrests would have defused the melee.
"You can't just arrest people for no reason," Schell said. He also suggested the city lacked room to house an army of detainees, and police officials said mass arrests would have taken too many officers off the street.
Top Clinton administration officials, meanwhile, declined to criticize Seattle officials.
"The city today faced very difficult situation," said Gene Sperling, a national economic adviser. "None of us . . . have the facts to try to second-guess and critique the situation."
Though protesters seemed to be everywhere, few took part in violence, broke windows, painted slogans on walls our fought police. On some street corners, spontaneous carnivals broke out. People danced. Jugglers juggled, and a woman practiced her Hula-Hoop. A young man strode through the crowd on stilts.
"I'm really bummed out that a few hundred out-of-control protesters are undermining the important, peaceful message brought downtown today by tens of thousands of demonstrators," said an exhausted Ron Judd, executive secretary of the King County Labor Council-AFL-CIO after 25,000 union members marched through downtown. "A hundred and fifty out-of-control anarchists that we suspected all along might be a problem are getting all the attention."
Judd said some of the anarchists had taken labor signs and were pretending to be union members.
Most protesters had also cleared out of downtown by the time police began enforcing the curfew between Interstate 5 and the waterfront and Yesler Way north to Denny Way.
After dark, police moved west down Pike Street to the Seattle Sheraton, shooting flash-bang concussion grenades and tear gas at a crowd of more than 1,000. Two platoons of police in riot gear followed protesters down Pike Street, firing tear gas.
"We are cleaning the streets," one police officer said.
Protesters, stopped at Third and Pike, screamed in response: "Animals, you animals, go back to your jungle, you animals!"
Late last night, police bomb squads rushed to a parking garage at Pine Street and Boylston Avenue on Capitol Hill to investigate a possible explosive device and to explode it.
Just before 10 p.m., an officer ran from the garage and yelled, "Fire in the hole!" A small explosion followed, destroying what officers said was an unattended briefcase but not a bomb.
About 300 to 400 protesters were nearby. Some had been chased out of downtown by police and tear gas to Capitol Hill. Others were locals angry that police were there.
"Off our hill! Off our hill!" protesters near Seattle Central Community College chanted at police. Many set off fireworks, including some from the roof of a church.
At 10 p.m., police set off three concussion grenades, then fired a dozen rounds of tear gas, forcing many protesters to flee.
Exactly who set off the first riot of the day was in dispute.
"I have been a medic for the protesters all day long," a Colorado man named Bob said. "And even though I saw some things people might say were violent, I think the police overreacted."
In one incident, police shot tear gas into a peaceful crowd and at a lone protester at Pine and Fifth who was simply waving a Mexican flag.
Amber Lewis, an 18-year-old journalism student from Emory College in Atlanta, was standing on trash can when tear gas hit her full in the face.
"This isn't supposed to happen to us," she said through tears, sitting on the sidewalk while two women rinsed her eyes with a saline solution.
At Fourth and Pike, five overturned trash containers littered the intersection, and was was set ablaze as the echo of tear-gas guns sounded in the distance.
"Not a good night to go shopping," deadpanned a police officer.
Those who tried to go about their business risked being drawn into the mess.
Late in the day, protesters at Sixth and Stewart hijacked an Emerald City Garbage Disposal truck on its way to the dump, blocking it with newspapers and trash cans to use it for protection against police.
The driver of the truck, whose name was not known yesterday, said over his cellular telephone that he felt annoyed, not threatened.
"Some of us have got to go to work," he told a reporter. "I wish they (the police) would use tear gas so I can just go."
The driver later moved the debris and drove away.
The manager of Ben Bridge Jewelers at Fourth and Union looked at the crowd of protesters and police just outside the bars of his closed shop, shaking his head and rubbing eyes stinging with tear gas.a
Most downtown businesses closed early, though Emmanuel Marianakis, owner of Olympic Broiler, said he planned to stay open until the authorities told him to close.
"No matter whether they're demonstrators or with WTO, they have to eat," Marianakis said, "and I sell food."
Several Metro buses were boarded by protesters who assaulted drivers, pulled battery plugs and slashed tires, said King County Executive Ron Sims, who promised more security today.
Reacting to rumors that the WTO would leave Seattle, Terry Laggner-Brown, spokeswoman for the Washington Council of International Trade, denied the rumors. The council brought the WTO to Seattle.
"I'm standing here in the WTO press office, and I can assure you that this meeting will continue," she said. "It's taking place as we speak."
Delegates from 135 countries were prevented from attending meetings at the Paramount in the morning, but business proceedings were held in the afternoon as police squeezed delegates through lines of protesters to the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. Some delegates were roughed up in the process, but none were reported injured.
The National Lawyers Guild faxed an angry letter to Schell yesterday afternoon, complaining of excessive police force. The guild, with 150 legal observers at the protests, claimed rubber bullets were fired by police at lest twice and said officers beat a television cameraman and chased down a woman to dose her with pepper spray.
Stamper refused to confirm that rubber bullets were used, but other officials said much smaller and less-dangerous rubber pellets and bean bags were used.
There were apparently no serious injuries, though Harborview Medical Center treated three people who had been gassed. Virginia Mason Medical Center treated five for gas and one for a minor rubber pellet injury. Swedish Medical Center treated three for gas and one for injuries from a fistfight.
The huge and orderly labor march seemed to calm things midday, but violence flared later on Fourth Avenue near Pike and Union Streets. It began when a small group of self-styled anarchists started throwing bottles at police, and used hammers and crowbars to shatter store windows.
"I don't think it's right to hurt someone," said Rain, a 17-year-old who joined in the rampage. "But property destruction is not violent . . . And we're not just going to lay down and say, "Peace, love, let me give you a flower, piggie.'"
Protesters from several groups, labor marchers and University of Washington students then set trash containers and protest signs afire. King County deputies responded by lobbing in a dozen tear-gas grenades.
Young people were running, rubbing their eyes, but other protesters rushed to take their place and the deputies threw more canisters. Some protesters tossed the canisters back.
Windows were broken at the Bank of America on Pike between Fourth and Fifth, as well as at Starbucks, Washington Mutual Bank, Warner Bros., Banana Republic, Nordstrom, FAO Schwarz and McDonald's. A red "A" -- the symbol for anarchy -- was spray-painted on some buildings.
On another downtown building, someone painted in black, "We are winning, don't forget."
P-I reporters D. Parvaz, Vanessa Ho, Kimberly A.C. Wilson, Mike Barber, Angela Galloway, Robert L. Jamieson Jr., Judd Slivka, Tom Paulson, Kristin Dizon, Ruth Schubert, George Foster, Heath Foster, Ed Offley, Michael Paulson, Dan Richman, Kery Murakami and Joel Connelly contributed to this report.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Protesters forced cancellation of the WTO's opening ceremonies yesterday morning at the Paramount Theater and for much of the day faced down outnumbered police on streets littered with the refuse of chaos: protest signs, spent tear-gas canisters and broken glass. (See map of locations of downtown violence.)
For more coverage, see our WTO index.
"Those who were protesting the opening of the WTO in fact were successful today," police Chief Norm Stamper said.
Police officers charge WTO protesters Tuesday evening, chasing them out of the Paramount Theater area downtown, and east toward Capitol Hill. Daniel Sheehan/P-I
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