News

Cop-out

WTO Report Clouds History

by Phil Campbell

· "The riotous group on Broadway Avenue was dispersed."

· "People threw unopened soup cans, bottles, and other items [at police] from rooftops."

· "An officer reported seeing someone in black clothing carrying a Molotov cocktail."

· "The East Precinct remained under siege until 0250 hours."

"It's a great piece of creative writing," says Robin Denburg, an environmental activist who was on Capitol Hill that night. The department's WTO "After-Action" report, which was released last week, claims to provide a "professional, candid, and sometimes painful" review of the facts.

Critics, however, see the report as a smokescreen: Admit the inevitable, obvious mistakes, but slant the story to co-opt the criticism.

Take the incident on Capitol Hill on December 1, a confrontation witnessed by two elected officials -- incoming City Council Member Judy Nicastro and then-outgoing King County Council Member Brian Derdowski. In their report, the police say the threat of riot and mayhem that night was real. Nicastro and Derdowski give a completely different account.

Nicastro says the crowd on Capitol Hill wasn't organized to riot. Rather, it was the police who were wildly disorganized. "I didn't know who was in charge, and how can you not know who's in charge?" Nicastro asks. "Whoever was giving the orders was accountable, and whoever was giving the orders was extreme and irrational."

Derdowski, a go-between for the cops and the protesters that night, dismisses much of the department's version of events as hogwash. "This report looks like they took isolated incidents where one or two people did something and made it sound like everybody was doing something [illegal]," he says. "There was a large sentiment for peaceful demonstration." The report fails to mention that there was little actual property damage that night, and that protesters were frequently seen policing themselves by stopping other protesters from knocking over garbage cans and picking up rocks.

The Seattle City Council is still preparing its three-part assessment of what happened that week.