Picket line draws complaints

For the past several weeks, tenants and customers of some downtown Spokane buildings have been complaining about loud and raucous protests by members of a local carpenters union.

Tenants of the U.S. Bank Building on Riverside Avenue say pickets with the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters have harassed customers and employees and on at least one occasion have been seen grabbing an elderly woman by the arm to keep her from passing.

But officials with the union say pickets have behaved appropriately and are well within their right to peaceful protest.

“We are complying with everything that is legal and within the confines of labor law and within the confines of First Amendment activity,” said union representative Eduardo Canales.

The group, which represents roughly 3,000 area carpenters and joiners, is picketing what it calls substandard practices by a contractor hired to do some work in several downtown buildings.

But the behavior of the protesters has been so disturbing that Kiemle & Hagood, the company that manages the U.S. Bank property, says it’s had to hire private security to monitor the group.

Larry Soehren, vice president of Kiemle & Hagood, would not comment on the issue. But in an e-mail forwarded to The Spokesman-Review, one employee of the company compares the behavior of the union pickets to that of 17 protesters arrested in Riverfront Park on July 4.

Kiemle & Hagood employee Lou Neeser wrote: “I’m amazed at the inconsistency of the Spokane Police Department’s and city official’s stance on citizen’s right to public protest.

“Hundreds and maybe thousands of complaints about the harassing techniques (yelling, shouting, bullhorns, whistles) used by the protestors by business professionals, business owners, tourists and downtown employees has fell on deaf ears at city hall,” Neeser wrote.

The actual number of complaints hasn’t been counted, but it’s certainly not in the hundreds, according to police officials.

Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said Monday she didn’t see a parallel between the July 4 arrests and the ongoing picketing in downtown, which has resulted in no arrests.

“I have not heard of any illegal actions going on,” she said of the downtown pickets.

Before the interview, Kirkpatrick had briefed the Spokane City Council’s Public Safety Committee on the July 4 arrests, defending her staff’s actions as appropriate because they witnessed activities they believed to be violations of city ordinances in the park that day, including disorderly conduct and trespass.

Downtown, there have been some complaints from occupants of the surrounding buildings about the level of noise from the union picket line, Kirkpatrick said. Police are sending equipment to measure the decibel level of the pickets.

“Even from the very beginning we had conversations with the Police Department before starting our activities,” Canales said. “It’s night and day in terms of what happened over there (in Riverfront Park). We are involved in a labor dispute; it is totally different.”

The focus of the picketing is a company called Construction Associates of Spokane Inc., which is doing work in the Paulsen, Fernwell and U.S. Bank buildings, Canales said. The company does not pay workers according to the area’s standards, Canales said.

After the city received some complaints from tenants of the Paulsen Building, across from the U.S. Bank Building, the pickets stopped using whistles with their chants.

There was also an instance that involved one person being hit with a picket sign and that person spraying the sign-holder with a fire hose, police officials said. A DJ from the radio station known as Live 104.5 called the police after allegedly being hit with a picket sign carried by a protester.

Officers arrived after what Kirkpatrick described as a “mutual combat” situation, and because neither person wanted to press charges, they made no arrests.

Toby Howell, the operations manager for Pro-Active Communications, which operates the radio station, said a listener is brought in once a week for a trivia game. A wrong answer earns the listener a dousing with a firehose, Howell said. In this case, one of the pickets was hit by some of the water.

Howell said the radio station recently discussed on the air why these protesters haven’t been treated like the protesters in the park. He described them as disruptive and disorderly.

“But the police statement to us is that they abide by all the laws, so nothing can be done,” Howell said.