Seattle police should apologize for violence against Black Lives Matter protesters, panel says

SEATTLE – The Seattle Police Department should “offer a sincere, public apology” for its violent response to Black Lives Matter protests that brought thousands of demonstrators to city streets during summer 2020, a panel of police, citizens and accountability experts has concluded.

In its fourth and final Sentinel Event Review of the SPD’s response to weeks of protests following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May 2020, the panel found Seattle officers and their commanders were slow to learn from their mistakes, repeatedly failing to recognize the difference between the throngs of protesters exercising their First Amendment rights and the few troublemakers in the crowd.

Panelists – who included community members, police accountability proponents, and police officers and commanders – also acknowledged the “longstanding trauma and fear” many have of police as a result of institutional SPD racism and discrimination.

Seattle Inspector General Lisa Judge said the police actions that caused the protests, as well as the SPD and city’s inability “to immediately craft particularized responses to the needs of peaceful protesters while addressing threats to public order and safety,” have had “deep and lasting” effects.

“Acknowledging the underlying contributing factor of institutional and systemic racism was critical to being able to move forward as a group,” Judge, whose office formed the panel, wrote in the report.

An apology from the SPD, the panel concluded, would be “a significant step in building trust between police and Seattle communities.”

SPD didn’t immediately provide comment on the report and its findings, released Tuesday.

The latest review focused on the police response to three specific protests, all of which occurred after the city had shut down the Capitol Hill Organized Protest at the end of July:

• A massive July 25 protest by more than 5,000 people downtown and on Capitol Hill over then-President Donald Trump’s announcement that he intended to send federal agents to Seattle, escalating tensions. “Panelists identified what appeared to be a ‘wholesale use of force’ against the crowd, despite the protest being largely peaceful,” the report concluded.
• A Sept. 7 march and protest outside the Seattle Police Officers Guild headquarters, where union officials blasted country music from loudspeakers as officers charged into the crowd on bicycles. Officers issued unlawful commands, such as “run” and “go faster,” as they used their bicycles, pepper spray and “blast balls” to shove protesters back onto themselves, creating a crush
  • .

  “Panelists identified a sense of anger and frustration … which influenced tactics and behaviors of officers,” during the incident, which the report described as “confrontational.”

  “It appeared SPD issued the dispersal order to justify riding, unprovoked, into the crowd,” the report said.

  • A Sept. 23 march involving about 200 people on Capitol Hill, sparked by a Kentucky grand jury’s decision not to indict officers for the shooting death of Breonna Taylor. During the march, an officer was struck with a bat and another officer rolled his bicycle over a protester’s head.

  The panel concluded police and their commanders failed to understand protests are not “monolithic,” and demonstrators are not an “organized, cohesive group planning to incite violence.” Lumping peaceful demonstrators in with vandals and troublemakers in a crowd, the panel found, led to “unwarranted defensiveness and fear in SPD.”

  The panel acknowledged officers were injured and that some in the crowds threw rocks, water bottles, bricks and fireworks at police. An attempt was made to set fire to the abandoned East Precinct, and firearms were stolen from police vehicles. By the end of the summer, officers were exhausted, stressed and on the defensive, all of which added to tension on the streets, the report said.

  The panel found police were receiving intelligence from various sources – ranging from undercover officers to the Department of Homeland Security – that emphasized the existence of so-called black bloc protesters intent on violence. Some of those reports were inaccurate or overblown, according to the report: Vandals, anarchists and other troublemakers made up only a fraction of the thousands protesting police violence, and the SPD repeatedly failed to distinguish between lawbreakers and peaceful demonstrators exercising their constitutional right to protest and petition the government.

  “Panelists … focused on SPD’s perception of the protesters as an organized, cohesive group planning to incite violence, suggesting this expectation helped to fuel an adversarial mindset and ‘othering’ of protesters,” the report said, adding the panel “questioned … whether it was used to justify increased force and aggression against individuals in the crowd.”

  The panel also criticized officers’ apparently intentional targeting of journalists and civil rights observers during some of the protests.

  “Panelists agreed on the need for … officers to limit the use of munitions and other force to the few individuals engaged in violence, rather than treating the whole crowd as a monolithic threat,” the report says. “The panel reviewed multiple videos showing officers using force against protesters who were attempting to move backwards, but not doing so with sufficient speed to satisfy some officers.”

  In all, over four reports, the Sentinel Event Review panel has identified 229 distinct factors that contributed to “undesirable incidents” and made 139 recommendations to the department and city officials “intended to prevent such events from happening again.”

  The panel’s recommendations were not unanimous, and the report notes its members spent time “grappling with the long and deeply ingrained history of racial inequalities in Seattle.” Judge wrote it was important the panelists “reach a consensus understanding the depth and breadth of hurt that has been suffered by unjust police and community interactions.

  “The combined impact of repeated exposure to abuse of power by police officers have created an insistence that SPD needs to embrace, acknowledge and repudiate an older power dynamic,” the report concludes. “Instead, SPD must truly protect and serve the community in ways that are just, fair and supportive.”