Schell got warning on WTO, says councilman

Mayor Paul Schell was warned a month earlier that police might be overwhelmed during World Trade Organization protests, a key Seattle city councilman says.

Councilman Jim Compton, chairman of a committee examining the WTO debacle, bases his assessment on city e-mail obtained by council investigators. In that e-mail, former Assistant Police Chief Ed Joiner told a Schell aide that police would be understaffed during the first four days of the five-day conference and described the department's readiness as "marginal."

"It's the first written evidence we have that police were in fact alarmed about what might happen with the WTO and told public officials," Compton said.

He said the memo suggests that Schell's aides knew a disaster was looming and raises questions about what, if anything, the mayor's office did to stop it.

"It raises the question of whether we should go beyond looking at police and start looking at public officials," Compton said.

But Schell aides say Compton is reading too much into the memo. Joiner retired in March and could not be reached for comment yesterday. In January, however, he told the Post-Intelligencer that he had the resources he felt he needed, but that events unfolded as they did simply because "nobody predicted what we would have Tuesday morning."

Protests spun out of control on the first day of the conference, which ran Nov. 30 through Dec. 3. In all, $2.5 million in property damage was counted, and more than 500 people arrested, though most of the charges were later dropped. Even though the National Guard was summoned to assist Seattle police and a curfew was imposed, no deaths or serious injuries resulted.

At one point in the interview Joiner noted that he and others had expressed concern that the city "almost threw out a welcome mat" to groups that oppose the WTO, despite violence at previous WTO-related protests in Geneva and London.

When concerns were brought up, the mayor's office helped work them out, Joiner said.

Threat assessments compiled up to two weeks before the conference had been on target, he said. Police expected some trouble, but were surprised at the intensity, size and number of locals who participated in vandalism, he said.

Even with 500 more police officers, Joiner said the confrontations, property damage and tear gas might have happened.

Mainly, protesters failed to honor agreements to allow an agreed-upon corridor for safe passage

of delegates, and through which police might

have been able to pass to stop vandalism, he said.

"That would have made a huge difference," he said.

In the Oct. 26, 1999, memo to Schell aide Clifford Traisman, Joiner raised alarms about a proposed City Council resolution to find housing for visiting protesters.

Joiner wrote: "The LAST thing we need to do is to invite -- officially or otherwise -- more people to Seattle for the WTOC (World Trade Organization Conference).

"As it stands right now, we are running a staffing deficit through the first four days of the conference. We simply will not have the resources to provide adequate security for any other sites, and our ability to effectively deal with the currently known protest groups is marginal.

"I hope that somebody is considering what Seattle is going to look like -- and what kind of economic damage it will suffer -- if this event gets out of hand."

Traisman, director of the city's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, said Joiner was talking only about the consequences of offering housing.

Traisman said that Joiner worried police would have had to keep tabs on other locations, in addition to providing security for WTO delegate's hotels and meeting areas.

"Ed Joiner was as adamant as I've ever seen him. His response to the idea was clearly, 'No. No. No., you've got to help me on this. You can't stretch my manpower any more at this late date,'" Traisman said.

Traisman said he, former Deputy Mayor Maud Daudon and other aides discussed the proposed resolution, and that mayor's staff persuaded the council to drop it.

Traisman said they considered the problem taken care of.

He said Joiner never again brought up staffing concerns.

Compton, however, says the memo shows that Joiner was trying to alert Schell's aides that the city was only marginally ready for "currently known" protesters, and inviting more protesters would make the situation even worse.

If so, Compton says it raises the question: Why didn't Schell ensure in the month before the conference that police wouldn't be overwhelmed by protesters?