Annie Marie Musselman
Contractor Keith Holm says he was singled out for a beating at the jail and he may take legal action.
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There's little question about what Seattle cops did to people on the street during WTO week. Opinions may vary about the appropriateness of those actions— indeed, a recent Seattle Times poll tells us that Eastsiders think the cops did just swell—but anyone with a television knows that demonstrators, and plenty of passersby, got gassed, tackled, pepper-sprayed, shot with rubber bullets, and (in hundreds of cases) hauled off to King County jail.
A greater, more ominous mystery surrounds the treatment of those protesters once they entered the confines of the jail, hidden from the army of cameras.
Upon the inmates' release at week's end, reports immediately began circulating of beatings and other brutality. The level of suspicion has only increased in the days since. Several groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild, are doing comprehensive surveys to find out what really happened in jail. Amnesty International has called for an investigation as well.
Interviews with numerous WTO demonstrators by Seattle Weekly seem to suggest that brutality did in fact occur, but the cases appear to have been isolated rather than widespread. The demonstrators who were targeted for harsh treatment were those who were most vocal, took on leadership roles, or refused to cooperate. These people were sometimes put in restraint chairs and isolation cells—or worse.
At least two cases have been brought to the attention of jail officials and could result in legal action against the county.
Keith Holm says he was beaten up by uniformed officers immediately upon arriving at the King County jail on Wednesday of WTO week. "Right as I went in, I was singled out off the bus, along with five others," says the 35-year-old construction contractor. He claims a half-dozen guards took turns assaulting him. "I was passed around like a hackey-sack. They stomped on my back and on the backs of my knees. They busted my face through a steel door and then through a second glass door. There were clumps of my hair in their fingers. There was nonstop screaming and profanity. They kept asking my name and saying they were going to kill me, going to fuck me up." Holm maintains he was not resisting at all.
His story is corroborated, at least in part, by witnesses. Jerry Knight, 32, who works as a postal clerk at the Broadway post office, was on the same bus taking Holm and other WTO captives from a processing center at Sand Point to the jail. He says there were a handful of people on the bus, including Holm, who were joking around, helping to keep the prisoners spirits high, as well as instructing them in jail solidarity tactics. One prankster called out to the driver: "Can I get a transfer to Kent?" When the bus arrived at the jail, Knight says, the cop on board demanded, "Who's the asshole who wanted to get off at Kent?" and proceeded to separate out the half-dozen "troublemakers."
Inside the jail garage, "there was a lot of shouting and yelling," says Knight. "The cops told us to keep our heads facing the wall." Just before he turned away, Knight could see the guards slam Holm's face into the wall and throw him to the ground. "Then he was separated from us. When I saw him next, several hours later, his face was all bruised up."
Another witness saw the tail end of the incident. Soph Davenport, a 28-year-old sheet metal worker and union activist, says she was at the check-in desk in the basement of the jail when she heard a "whoomp" at the glass door behind her and turned to see Holm being dragged in and thrown down on a counter, his left arm twisted behind him. "He was bleeding around the eyes," she says. "They kept saying, 'Answer the question.' He was very calmly repeating to them, 'I'm not a threat to you. I have a heart murmur.'"
Eventually a captain came down and spoke to Holm. His photograph was taken and he gave a statement to the jail's Internal Investigations unit. He later was released from jail without any charges being filed.
Steve Thompson, the interim director of the King County jail, says he knows of "no incidents where we would intentionally inflict pain on somebody other than as a defensive response." He says that in the Holm case, as in other cases of alleged WTO abuse, the jail simply has not received any detailed accusations from the inmates. "If you have names of people who are willing to say, 'Here's what happened to me,' and have some specifics, we are ready to roll by fully investigating that," Thompson says.
"All of our officers have name tags on," he notes. "We need to have someone come in and say who it was, what time it was. We need to have something beyond just 'somebody pulled my hair at some point in time.' There's not really very much you can do with that."
Holm was scheduled to speak to jail officials again but did not keep the appointment because of an outstanding federal warrant arising from overdue child support, according to Holm. He says he intends to press criminal charges.
