New footage shows how police kettled protesters, trapping them in a corridor of violence in the early days of 2020 protests.
Newly obtained body worn video and helicopter surveillance footage shine new light on the crowd control tactics of the Seattle Police Department (SPD) during the summer protests of 2020. It shows SPD corralling people into Westlake Park on May 31, and organizing to herd protesters directly to the East Precinct on June 1, where they would be confronted by an SPD who later stated they were preparing for “battle.” Multiple officers then verbalized they had “fun” after deploying chemical weapons.
SPD’s commander in the field was then promoted, and appointed to the Office of Inspector General’s Sentinel Event Review, which is responsible for analyzing police use-of-force incidents that caused injuries or deaths and learning lessons to prevent them in the future.
The documentation shows that while a recent lawsuit stemming from SPD’s excessive force in 2020 settled for $10 million, not including an additional $30 million in legal expenses fighting the case, a full accounting of the department’s 2020 conduct is still far from resolved.
The ACLU of Washington declined to comment on the specific circumstances within this story due to ongoing litigation with the city stemming from the 2020 protests. However, in general, Enoka Herat, Policing and Immigration Policy Program Director noted that “Police should prioritize protecting everyone’s civil rights and liberties, even when protestors express views that are critical of the department, and force cannot be used to silence dissent.”
Despite the historic magnitude of financial costs to the city across multiple legal settlements, in the three-plus years since the summer of 2020, the department internally has rarely found any of its conduct to be worthy of punishment beyond a handful of oral and written reprimands.
Only four out of 133, or 3%, of investigations completed by the Seattle Office of Police Accountability (OPA) into SPD’s 2020 protest conduct have resulted in officer suspensions without pay, according to a review of OPA files. SPD declined to comment for this story.
“Because – Don’t ever forget the power of Because.”
Following widespread protests on May 30, 2020 Mayor Jenny Durkan declared a curfew within city limits after 5pm for the following two days, May 31 and June 1, 2020.
On May 31, videos show SPD luring protesters into Westlake Park, trapping them in, and using the pretext of Mayor Durkan’s curfew order to forcibly herd the crowd through the streets of Seattle, under threat of arrest and violence.
Initially, SPD had formed a cordon around Westlake Park to exclude the public from entering Seattle’s downtown core.
Newly released body worn video footage and King County Sheriff video footage show SPD directives in the field were diametrically opposed to their initial stated goal of establishing a restricted cordon around downtown. (See the video below compiling some of the highlights from that footage.)
