Schell OK'd use of hoses on WTO protesters

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Schell OK'd use of hoses on WTO protesters

Thursday, July 6, 2000

By KERY MURAKAMI
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

With rioters claiming the streets during the first day of the World Trade Organization protests last year, Mayor Paul Schell said he would authorize using fire hoses against protesters, Seattle Fire Chief James Sewell confirmed yesterday.

Within hours of the conversation, firefighters drove a water pumper, usually used to clean streets, to the heart of the protests downtown "for crowd control," according to a Fire Department document.

The next night, another pumper was dispatched to Capitol Hill.

Firefighters strongly opposed use of the high-pressure hoses against the protesters but struck a compromise, agreeing only to drive the pumpers to the scene for police to use. And the firefighters dressed in plain clothes, rather than be seen in uniform.

Both times, according to a knowledgeable sources, the pumpers arrived too late and were not used. (See related developments today: Schell calls for pre-event reviews to avoid WTO-type chaos.)

Up to now, it was known that police had asked firefighters for crowd control help, but the request was turned down. However, Fire Department documents and police radio transmissions obtained by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer under the state public records act reveal that after the initial denial, pumpers were indeed sent to protest scenes.

It is also the first indication that Schell was willing to turn the hoses on the protesters.

According to Fire Department log of the first day's protests Nov. 30: then-Assistant Police Chief Ed Joiner asked for the Fire Department's help with "crowd control" at 5:46 p.m. But the department's Resource Management Center log notes that the request was denied by then-Assistant Fire Chief Roger Ramsey and by Sewell.

A short time later, Sewell said he spoke with Schell at the mayor's office and that Schell told him "he would authorize the use of that tactic if necessary."

Schell spokesman Dick Lilly said Schell's aides recall the conversation differently -- that the mayor was raising the idea just as a "what if?"

"The mayor's office did not make tactical decisions at any time," Lilly said.

Sewell agreed that Schell did not interfere in the tactical details of how to use high-pressure hoses on protesters. But when asked whether Schell was only brainstorming ideas, Sewell said it was clear the mayor was authorizing use of the hoses against protesters.

Interviewed by one of the City Council citizens panels examining the WTO, Schell said using fire hoses on protesters was quickly dismissed as an "ill-advised, bad idea. It wouldn't work."

Schell was referring to sending fire engines into the protests. He did not volunteer that water pumpers, which are operated by Seattle Transportation, were twice sent to protests with firefighters aboard.

Although firefighters didn't have to use the hoses, they remained unhappy at having been involved. The Fire Department's after-action report on the WTO incidents noted that "policies on SFD use of their equipment to assist law enforcement containment of crowds was not adhered to by law enforcement."

It recommended "the adoption of a city policy to prohibit the use of fire resources related to hostile crowd management."

Seattle Firefighters Union president Charles Hawkins agreed.

"It's just plain wrong. Crowd control is not our job. We're not trained in it. We don't know what to do. You agitate the crowd. Not only that, it hurts the people they are turned on," Hawkins said.

And City Councilman Nick Licata, a member of the council committee reviewing the events surrounding the WTO, said: "The whole idea of turning hoses on protesters is so alien to the Seattle spirit of civil discourse. I'm shocked that the mayor would have authorized that; I think of the civil rights protests in Alabama."

Lilly, however, angrily disputed any comparison with the now famous images of firefighters turning their hoses on civil rights protesters. "That's totally out of line," he said. "This is a different context, a different group of people."

P-I reporter Kery Murakami can be reached at 206-448-8029 or kerymurakami@seattle-pi.com