May Day, circa 2013.
May Day, circa 2013. Ansel Herz

For the past two years, I've covered the annual "Oh shit it's happening again" runup to May Day in Seattle. This year, May Day—traditionally a day of protest against injustice towards workers and immigrants, that's been marred in recent years by minor outbreaks of vandalism and heavy-handed police responses—falls on this coming Friday.

On Monday, Seattle police held a press conference to say what they always say: they're prepared.

The demonstrations scheduled so far include a Black Lives Matter protest at MLK Memorial Park at 10:25 a.m., the annual El Comite-sponsored march for immigration reform beginning at 3 p.m. at Judkins Park, and an Anticapitalist March beginning at 6 p.m. at Seattle Central College.

At Monday's police press conference, Captain Chris Fowler agreed that police were more restrained last year than in 2012 and 2013. He said they'll use that same approach this year. That might have something to do with the watchful eye of the Department of Justice—which was wide open, in the form of observers with video cameras, throughout last year's proceedings and late into the night. Police didn't try to herd protesters with force, they didn't pepper spray journalists, and most of the time, they stayed on their bikes instead of stomping around in riot gear holding batons.

"Just because it's blocking traffic—that isn't enough to take action," Fowler said on Monday. "As long as there isn't violence and there isn't serious property damage, then we'll continue to support the protesters and the march itself." Minor vandalism like kicking over a mailbox, on its own, wouldn't justify police use of force, he suggested.

That's good to hear. Those Baltimore riots all over the news? Eyewitnesses say a militarized police crackdown on kids coming home from school kicked off the whole shebang.

The most interesting part of the press conference came, though, when Fowler attempted to evade questions from KOMO's Jon Humbert about the use of undercover (also known as plainclothes) police:

When it comes to tactics inside the group, anarchists in previous years have said there have been undercover officers who've essentially infiltrated their ranks and wear the same garb and are participating in fomenting some of the activities in order to elicit arrests. Has that ever happened? Have SPD officers ever gone undercover into these groups?

Fowler: [Laughs] That's an interesting question. That really gets into the specific tactics on how we deal with any event and any specific event, so I'm going to have to defer on that particular question.

Are there undercover police in the groups, though, and in marches?

Fowler: Well, again, I'm not going to talk about the specific tactics that we use and how we coordinate our responses on specific event or group. I mean, we use a lot of different tactics and techniques...

Sergeant Sean Whitcomb: Ansel wrote about this extensively, and we talked about it. It's the difference between undercover and plainclothes. And at an event like this, just like at a Mariner's game or Fourth of July, you're always going to see plainclothes officers. An undercover officer implies that you've got someone who's pretending to be an anarchist and fomenting that type of behavior. In this case, having people who are plainclothes is a force multiplier for us.

Is plainclothes having a mask on and covering their identity like the other folks in the marches? Or wearing a Guy Fawkes mask? Where is that line?

Fowler: I'm not in the crowd, so I honestly can't speak to that.

But is that something the department wants to do? That that's an appropriate tactic for this sort of event?

Fowler: That I don't know. I mean, it isn't something that I talk about.

Is it effective policing?

Fowler: I don't know that we do that. I have not talked about it, I have not forwarded that particular tactic. And so I can't speak to that.

Whitcomb: I'm not aware that that's been done. [We've done] plainclothes. Not undercover deployment.

See y'all in the streets on Friday.