Word had spread through the ranks that I'd answered "yes" to a reporter who wanted to know if I'd seen any police conduct that disturbed me. Well, I sure as hell had, and I wasn't about to lie about it. That I'd lavishly praised the sterling performance of my officers at a string of press conferences made no difference to many of my cops. I'd broken an important provision of "the Code." Like the Republicans' "Eleventh Amendment," police officers are not to speak ill of one another—even if one of them has assaulted an unarmed, retreating demonstrator. Or
I punch in the code and retrieve the message. It's not from a cop, after all. It's from a friend. A doctor friend I have dinner with several times a year. I sigh. Thank God, I can use a little support right about now.
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A Good Cop Wasted
The WTO debacle brought down Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper, one of America's most progressive cops. Now he's published a memoir offering a frank look at his rise and fall, and the challenges of reforming law enforcement. By Nina Shapiro MORE
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"I can't believe what I'm seeing on TV," says the friend's voice, dripping with venom. "Your cops are worse than the fucking Gestapo. I'm totally repulsed that you're allowing this. You're a sorry, miserable excuse of a human being and I'm appalled that you're our chief."
But at the end of the week there was this: My cops hadn't killed anyone. Given fatigue, provocation, and ample legal justification to employ lethal force on numerous occasions, they'd held their fire. The Battle produced not a single death (and fewer than a hundred injuries, the most serious of which was a broken arm).
The Battle of Seattle was an important event in the history of American social and political protest. Whereas ten years ago a thousand people might have shown up to protest the WTO, there were fifty times that number on the streets of Seattle in the fall of '99. I believe that's a testament not only to the power of the Internet (which has all but replaced posters on fences, campus leafleting, and telephone trees as the primary means of organizing and mobilizing protest) but also to broad, intense antiglobalization sentiment and to a deep mistrust of our government's policies. Witness the awesome numbers of protesters who took to the streets locally (as well as globally) to protest America's invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Seattle was, in the end, just too damned small to pull it off. If you're thinking about hosting such an event you need to be able to count your cops in the thousands or tens of thousands, not hundreds. Hell, the city wouldn't have had enough cops had we called in every officer in the state.
We learned many lessons from the Battle, foremost of which are: (1) line up as much help in advance as you possibly can, then find more; (2) plan for "force multipliers" (i.e., volunteers), but don't become overreliant on them; and (3) keep demonstrators at a much greater distance from official venues. No matter how much they bitch about it.
And finally, my gift to every police executive and mayor in cities the size of Seattle's: Think twice before saying yes to an organization whose title contains any of the following words: world, worldwide, global, international, multinational, bilateral, trilateral, multilateral, economic, monetary, fiscal, finance, financial, fund, bank, banking, or trade.
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