News

GETTING AWAY WITH IT

I have to juxtapose Philip Dawdy's article "What the Cops Learned" [Nov. 24], re WTO 1999, with the reality of Seattle police out of control on March 22, 2003, and June 2, 2003. Dawdy says, "The use of less-lethal weapons is one of the most ticklish in crowd control. Use them indiscriminately, and the public regards you as thugs. . . . The lesson from Seattle, [Jim] Pugel says, is that you shouldn't use these weapons on entire crowds, as was done here, but should focus on individual troublemakers." Does Dawdy believe that Seattle police used "discriminate control on individual troublemakers" at the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit protests on June 2, 2003? Me standing there unarmed, nonviolently protesting in a permitted protest zone, meant I had to have concussion grenades shot next to me, machine guns aimed at me, police acting erratically with name tags covered up, and pepper spray aimed at me why again? So is Dawdy saying that people viewed the SPD as "thugs" for this indiscriminate use of weaponry? How about on March 22, 2003? The SPD corralling something like 400 people downtown, for no clear purpose other than intimidation, and using weaponry upon unarmed, nonviolent antiwar protesters was using "discriminate force on specific individuals" how again?

In the light of reality, I cannot understand how anyone could make the statements made in that article. No, what the police learned from WTO 1999 is they can violently abuse citizens and get away with it. They learned they could cover up their name tags, then go riot anonymously in the streets. They learned they would not be individually held accountable for beating unarmed citizens in broad daylight. And they are still attacking large crowds indiscriminately with "less-lethal" weaponry in 2003, which is well past 1999. And what did the Office of Professional Accountability and the City Council do about all the complaints of police brutality from mothers, clergy, attorneys, and citizens on March 22 and June 2, 2003? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Kirsten Anderberg
Seattle

OK TO BLOODY HEADS?

"Heads were bloodied by baton-swinging, pepper-spraying armored cops wearing no identification and not bothering to distinguish activist from anarchist" ["Whatever Happened to 'Hippie Bitch' Forman?" Nov. 24]:

What is Rick Anderson trying to say here? That it's OK for cops to bloody the heads of anarchists? That there is a difference between an anarchist and an activist that cops could notice on the street anyways?

What Anderson is doing is not only creating a nonexistent divide between anarchist and activist but also presenting the idea that it is acceptable to beat and abuse anarchists. It needs to be stated very clearly that police attacked everyone and anyone without suggesting that their error was simply in attacking activists along with anarchists. The message that needs to be presented is that it is not acceptable for police to be attacking anyone at any time.

Niels Asmussen
Hartford, CT

REWRITING HISTORY

I was more than disappointed with your recent coverage of the WTO Ministerial [WTO: Five Years After cover package, Nov. 24]. The articles imply demonstrators were teargassed because windows were broken. Assistant Chief Jim Pugel is allowed to rewrite history, and protesters are compared to terrorists. Since the errors are too numerous to be addressed here, I'll deal with the worst.

1. Broken Windows: CS (tear) gas was used against thousands of demonstrators hours before a single window was broken. The amount of property damage was minimal. The media showed the same shots of a few windows being broken because that was all there was.

2. SPD Had No Idea What to Expect; the Gas Was a Last Resort: Pugel laments, "No one predicted what happened here," without contradiction. Labor promised to deliver 50,000–100,000 people. Stories appeared in The New York Times. Many predicted this would be the protest of the century. Organizers called for "shutting the WTO down." Activists held training workshops in "direct action."

The SPD's use of the gas had been planned from the beginning. The King County Sheriff's after-action report states that the Seattle police "expected fifty thousand demonstrators—their plan was to use tear gas and lots of it."

3. Lessons Were Learned: Pugel states the lesson of "less-lethal" munitions is that they shouldn't be used against entire crowds. Could Pugel explain what occurred June 2, 2003, when demonstrators were subject to a half-hour barrage of these munitions while protesting the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit?

Apparently the SPD have not learned this lesson. If Seattle Weekly were doing their job here, maybe they might.

Paul Richmond
Seattle

DON'T EXCUSE POWELL

Your Anarchist for Kerry, not content with the idiocy of supporting the nonalternative to warmonger candidate No. 1, must inflict upon us further nonsense ["The Cult of George," Nov. 24]. Departing Colin Powell was a voice of "relative sanity" in the Bush administration. Geov Parrish would improve his political analysis by reading the comics; I note in a recent Boondocks the observation about the dearly departed Mr. Powell that no one else in the current administration could lie with such dignity and sincerity. Powell's son, over at the FCC, appears to be cut from the same corrupt mold as dear old dad, doing his darnedest to gather mass communications into fewer corporate hands.