Whenever the "showed great restraint" buzz-phrase is uttered, isn't that an admission that the supposed sober, trained professional appraisers of the situation are just a green hat away from becoming vicious paramilitary troopers?

Or that they were dealing with serious asshats that would try anyone's patience.

Exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPh3Zojw…

@2: You couldn't be more wrong. As seems obvious, this was unrelated to the May Day protester vs. police clash, which happened later.

Garland, the photographer, was there as this man got himself tangled in the basketball hoop, too. "Although SPD made a twitter joke about 'goal tending'," he said on Facebook, "it was hard to watch someone with mental illness (drug addiction), struggle in this way."

God bless the SPD. Seeing the shit they have to deal with in this town makes their forebearance admirable.

Well, injury even death is a long time accepted risk of being a Journalist out in the field. So why is this story even happening?

"I've asked the SPD whether the indiscriminate impacts of its use of force during May Day on reporters and legal observers is considered acceptable, but I've received no response so far."

I wouldn't respond to the question either. It's misplaced, out of context, and written to Not be answered.

And since when did "Green Hats" become the official hat of "Observers" ? And if you have a "Green Hat", the Police are supposed to ensure your Safety? Not engage Wanna Be Anarchist rioters near an "Observer" from breaking the law? What? If you're observing, observing what? sounds like these "Observers" were not impartial. I'm sure they wouldn't report to police any illegal action they saw. They'd let the law breaker go. Observers get hurt and worse too. If they want to "Observe", Join NATO as an Observer. Then you wouldn't cry about some Wanna Be's in Seattle.

If the question is about whether or not police were targeting journalists, this video is inconclusive. Occupational hazards, but I hope her injuries are minor and she has a speedy recovery.

"The use, attempt, or offer to use force upon or toward the person of another is not unlawful in the following cases:

(1) Whenever necessarily used by a public officer in the performance of a legal duty, or a person assisting the officer and acting under the officer's direction;

(2) Whenever necessarily used by a person arresting one who has committed a felony and delivering him or her to a public officer competent to receive him or her into custody;" RCW 9A.16.020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=23&v=SPB… If you watch the video. At about the 4 second mark, one of protesters takes a swing at the guy in the blue, short sleeve polo shirt. An officer zooms up in reaction and tackles the alleged perpetrator at the 30 second mark. We can and should debate what is "reasonable" but in a crowd like that with collaborators (they don't restrain him and hold him for police) around the alleged perpetrator 200 years of case law would hold such a tactic to be reasonable because of the circumstances. We can and should have a further discussion about what is "reasonable," but it is generally held that it is whatever force is required to quickly overcome resistance and get someone into custody. It is highly circumstance dependent.

With regard to the flash bangs, what would you have the cops do differently in a crowded, chaotic and fluid situation where those doing property damage and violence in the crowd are using the crowd (more often than not with the crowds tacit endorsement since they do nothing to stop it) where it is very difficult to "cut out" the perpetrators from those merely providing them cover and concealment? The tactical options are not great. A cop can't know who is going to jump them as they go for the perpetrator, from the dozens surrounding the perpetrator, and for officer safety they would need to send in a lot of cops. Then people complain about too many being their and intimidation. Not to mention 25 cops wading into the crowd as the guy flees creates trampling risks and other potential conflict and injury.

Plus once the crowd is stopped, ordered to disburse, etc. and don't (they don't have a permit to march and are no more entitled to the street than other lawful users and have to comply with the rules governing pedestrian conduct, auto right-of-way, legally crossing, etc.) they all are potentially subject to arrest. (Note: There were two protest earlier in the day that went off without a hitch because the protesters followed the rules and did not coercively take the street from other lawful assemblers, speakers, and users).

So it's OK to be a critic, but it is much more difficult to come up with practical alternatives that will work in the real world that allow police to make arrests and stop crime in a large, fluid, unhelpful crowd that at best is turning a blind-eye to illegal activity occurring around them and at best are passively or actively abetting it. The reporting on the subject makes the "perfect the enemy of the good." What concrete, realistic better alternatives do Stranger readers suggest, short of just letting them do whatever property damage the crowd wants or letting the crowd go wherever it wants and coercively depriving others of use of the public square for other assembly, speech, and mobility? Remember the guy going to a club on a Friday Night to assemble, dance, speak, cheer while listen to a band, and otherwise express himself has the right to do so without being blocked and prevented of doing so by a group of un-permitted protesters blocking all other users.

@7 tl;dr

the best way to stop protests is to disburse people through violent tactics, which cause more protests, which need to be disbursed using violent tactics, which cause more protests, which need to be disbursed using violent tactics, which cause more protests.

force feeding boots to people one kick at a time, brought to you by americorp, the corporation that stops terrorism by invading countries and killing a bunch of innocent people for political motives. freedom tastes like blood and depleted uranium.

"This year, what began as a peaceful anticapitalist march turned into a tense standoff when police tackled a masked protester from behind...."

As Chicago mayor Richard J Daley, so aptly put it, "The policeman isn't there to create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve disorder."

I was also targeted by SPD while filming them on Broadway as the chaos started. The cops were very aggressive. I have a large bruise on my ankle where a "flashbang" (or what a cop later referred to as a :"stingball" hit me). I also have part of the projectile which SPD used to assault me. I'll be filing a complaint and contactiung other victims. This type of brutality has to stop!

@9. There is truth to what you say.

So what do you suggest as an alternative? Ask them to disburse? Certainly! But if they don't comply, then what? If your the cops, what tactic do you use next? Tear gas? It was done. How well did that work? Or do you just let them continue to take swings at guys like the "blue shirt" dude and destroy property?

This gets discussed as if there is some magic technology to harmlessly, with no risk to the people targeted, remove the bad actors from the crowd and take them into custody. It gets discussed as if there is some magic mind-control technology to get people to disburse that have refused to comply with such direction. There isn't. Once people engage in assaultive or property damaging behavior or a crowd refuses to disburse, the tactical alternatives for taking people into custody or achieving compliance are lousy, lousier, even more lousy, and lousiest. All have collateral and unwelcome consequences for by-standers, the alleged perpetrator, and the cops enforcing the laws enacted by this democracy to regulate public behavior.

Lots of fascists in this thread.

@11. Were you ordered to disburse? Did you? I'm just asking.

Beyond that the questions asked of @9, apply. What would you suggest the police do when faced with a crowd with folks among it that are engaged in assaults of other parties and property damage? What tactics would you suggest as an alternative as someone who was there?

Buncha fucking fascism apologists up in this thread.

And by the way, this is fucking America; injury and/or death should not be considered a realistic occupational hazard of being a fucking journalist. They're not reporting from inside the Green Zone in Baghdad. Fuck the lot of you dipshit, brutality dismissing hand-wavers.

@15. Nobody wants injury or death, but you did not answer the questions. How would you have the police address the issue without that outcome?

The word is disperse, folks.

Pretty strange what goes on in a few square blocks of Seattle.

If it weren't for all the social media, no one would ever know.

It was just a nice sunny day in Covington...great for a bike right.

@18, I was wondering why so many commenters wanted the protestors to pay out funds to the cops. Although maybe that would help.

As an observer in the midst of the collective tantrum near SCC, most of what I saw involved white kids trying as hard as possible to instigate the cops to react to them. Easily the most popular activity was standing around desperately waiting with an iPhone at the ready to capture any resulting "fascism" by the cops (i.e. reacting to having heavy objects thrown at them, fires, and disobeying of instructions. But none was to be had, the poor little shits, so then what? Stomp your feet and break shit, of course. And while it was frustrating to see these kids cause damage to my neighborhood, it was more the cringing embarrassment I felt at watching this Portlandia-esque riot-for-the-sake-of-being-called-a-rioter desperation that really made my eyes roll. It was an SNL skit IRL. Tagging a publicly funded school with anarchist graffiti? You couldn't make this shit up.

May Day was swell until the great oppressed white horde stole the mic. At least their x-boxes got the night off.

#7, crowded, chaotic and fluid situations contraindicate flash bang use. Firing flash bangs into crowds drastically increases the chance you're going to hit somebody with that projectile. Firing sting balls into crowds only angers people, it does not disperse the crowd One uses pepper spray, sonic devices, microwave deterrents, fire hoses on a relatively low pressure and strobing green floodlights to disperse crowds.
You make people uncomfortable to get them to leave. You don't shoot them.

May Day is kind of the mid-20s Seattle loser boy version of Spring Break.

#23, most of the people arrested during May Day riots as far as I know are in their 30's, not their 20's. I know some of them, and they're closer to 40 than 25.

https://twitter.com/joshkerns38/status/5…

#25, now that's Dadaism in action.

suddenly sawant's opposition to o'toole doesn't seem so crazy now does it?

Sawant's opposition to O'Toole never seemed crazy. It was clear before O'Toole got the job she had no interest in the difficult work of reforming the SPD.

@14 I would suggest that the cops quit their jobs and do something actually productive.

@12 there used to be a thing called 'work' that the police used to do. now they just throw flash bangs and rubber bullets. ranks keep order, ranks follow orders, ranks made to order. what's your rank? homeless, poor, middle class, shielded?

@18 language is interest%, spell checkers are tools

@20 overtime, the police don't do it for free, gotta keep our wallets full of slave owners

land of the thief home of the slave, grand imperial guard where the dollar is sacred and power is god.

Well, I guess the asshole cops that are the Seattle PD need to get sued. Again.

I know that the opening link to google only had one definition, but come on guys.

If you had decided to click a link, or, you know, to grab an actual physical object.. "to distribute or scatter. Ex: Our troops were disbursed over a wide area. She disbursed the flowers to the children."

How intellectual and snarky you all must feel.

@22, Now there is a thoughtful response on a Stranger thread. Who would have thunk it!

so the stranger is pro outsiders coming up to capitol hill to cause shit? Whats the difference between the black bloc asshats and the party bro asshats? Both are just angry spoiled young white men look to cause shit.

Damn Ansel, you must be tired by now. I haven't seen anyone spin so hard in a very long time.

#34, arrest records show most of these protesters are Cap Hill residents. They're not outsiders. They're not even "King County scum". They're hyperlocals. The whole Black Bloc protesters being bussed from Oregon line has always been BS. It never made sense. There are more anarchists in Washington than in Oregon. It would be like importing Golden Delicious Apples.

I have no love of police, and the sight of militaristic methods and equipment used by police makes me very uncomfortable, so I will be one of the first to cry foul when the police overstep appropriate use of force and escalate rather than de-escalate situations. However, the complete lack of reasonable responses (including my own) to @georgeingeorgetown makes me think people just want to bitch about police, whether in action or inaction. They saw someone commit an assault in an area where people weren't even supposed to be protesting, and attempted to make people disperse to go after that criminal (ACTUAL criminal!). The flashbangs were overboard, yes. But anything they would have done would have gotten you all riled up. If you complain like this and offer no alternative other than quit your job (thanks, @orgasm, every post you make sounds like bad poetry slam nonsense and makes me think you are just a really convincing strawman), and call anyone who doesn't condemn everything they do a fascist apologist, they have a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation. So please, anybody, give a reasonable way for police to deal with individual people obviously committing crimes in a crowd that is protesting, because people will always take advantage of these protests to commit crimes because they know they can. And letting protesting become equated with looting and lawlessness will be the death of protesting. And we need the right and opportunity to protest. You're making it worse, and you are making reasonable people discount anything you say because you're so mindlessly indignant, even when you might have a good point.

So, on the one hand, Capitol Hill has been destroyed by gentrification and is unaffordable to everyone but high tech workers who hate gays and artists and have girlfriends who yell "whoo".

On the other hand, most of the protesters arrested were residents of the neighborhood?

Does that mean that the high tech bro culture is actually composed of anarchists and anti-capitalists? Or did we get our cliches mixed somehow?

You've got your actual developers.. who, if you ask a developer you'd want to talk to, well, yeah.

We have to classify the subgenres of our music into Manchester Orchestra and Norwegian death metal.

Or, for example, well-heeled techie speaking as "we" from the anarchist perspective the other night.

So, yes. We hate the dollar. We love cryptocurrency. We love Rand Paul.

And then there is.. we have diplomas from fake schools and our MO is to make everything last as long as possible.

Or the guy wearing mittens in warm weather to keep his coding hands warm.

Or so many other fucked up things.

@37 i wonder how cops handle mardi gras, or st patricks day. probably use flash bangs and rubber bullets. way to go seaddle

@40- cops in New Orleans throw your ass in a van with a bunch of other drunk-as-fuck people, let you stew in the vomit and piss and humidity for a couple of hours THEN take you to booking. I, thankfully, have myself never been through the ordeal.

@41 you have taught me nothing

Seems that our tax dollars are now funding the SPD to infiltrate blogs on the Stranger. Don't you cops have better things to do with your time than concoct these pathetic excuses and justifications for your steroid-induced hate crimes?

@38 well said!

I don't know man, the hypocrisy is hard to swallow with Ansel's brand of neo-liberal "journalism," the anarchists fucking up a public school... It's all so nonsensical it runs the risk of distracting from the the other issues of May Day, as well as overshadowing the police abuses when and where they occur.

Back in the good old days the cops would just wade into the crowd with clubs swinging. Now they have to use "less lethal" means, but being in the middle of a riot is still dangerous.

@11

Call 1-800-WHAAAAA to complain........

@47

Go on you. Toss a stingball grenade for me

Oh but I thought the Times said SPD had everything under control, what with their battalion of ninjanazi's running around throwing bombs at people. I guess they haven't figured out yet that what goes around comes around, and where karma is concerned, what comes around is usually amplified. Now that said, there were a lot of anarchists in the mix and these people need to realize that they're just as culpable as the police. And they're not immune to karma, either.