Undercover Police Provoke Conflict; Legal Observer Shot and Hospitalized

At least twelve people have been arrested following June 2 demonstrations against the LEIU conference in downtown Seattle, near where the secretive private intelligence network is holding its annual conference. In one confrontation between Seattle Police and demonstrators, National Lawyers Guild legal observer Larry Hildes was hospitalized after being shot in the back with "non-lethal" weapons.
Following an early evening rally in Westlake Park, several hundred demonstrators began a nonviolent, permitted march toward the LEIU conference site, the Red Lion Hotel, where cordons of police waited in riot gear. The crowd continued to rally there with music from the Anti-Fascist Marching Band and the Infernal Noise Brigade; some burned and tore US flags. One protester climbed atop a nearby awning and attempted to burn a flag there; as he descended, other demonstrators huddled around him to protect him against identification and arrest. However, one or more of the people in this huddle turned out to be undercover police, and disorder broke out when one undercover cop reportedly provoked a fistfight while attempting to subdue the protester. The police then moved against the dispersing crowd, using pepper spray, concussion grenades, plastic clubs and guns loaded with non-lethal weapons. Several people were seriously hurt after receiving pepper spray in the face. Before being taken to the hospital, Hildes reportedly described the encounter as "the worst he had ever seen.

Personal observations of LEIU march and police reaction
by Peter Henry


Some Reflections on the LEIU Protest (June 2, 2003)

Here are some of my impressions of today’s rally and march - and of the police response.

The rally was to support civil liberties and to speak against uncontrolled police surveillance, as practiced by the LEIU (Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit). The LEIU is a private organization, and my first response to their conference in Seattle was, “Big deal. A police industry trade show, just like any other industry.” But I learned that the LEIU is really a back-door sub-legal way of maintaining files on troublemakers - like us - or anyone who they might consider involved in “organized crime” in any peripheral, unconfirmed way.

What I mean by “sub-legal” is that many of these files are gathered illegally by police when they surveil such dangerous groups as the American Friends’ Service Committee. Then when the police are forced to divulge and destroy their files, they turn them over to the LEIU database instead. For each AFSC group that goes through the trouble of finding out and expunging their files, how many groups and individuals don’t know or don’t bother? How big is the LEIU data base?

As a private entity the LEIU is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. So it’s kind of like the credit report agencies, only you can’t get your report from the LEIU, and whose business is it anyway? Why should they have a right to keep a file on whomever they want? Some example records (with names removed) from the 60s and 70s were posted at the teach-in on Sunday. One person had a file because he was a known practicing Muslim. That’s it. Other people were considered interstate criminals because they were organizers for the Black Panthers, American Indian Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, various peace groups etc.

And of course it’s a two-way street. The LEIU shares its data with various police agencies. I don’t know how this works, how the police check the information for veracity, or just use it for monitoring political groups. It stinks.

So that’s why I went downtown.

The rally consisted of several hundred people milling around listening to speeches. Then at 7 PM we started a march to the Red Lion. It wasn’t a sedate march, like the post-War SNOW march on Capitol Hill. Give it to the young folks - they bring a lot of energy. It was noisy and in-your-face. People aggressively banged pots and pans, shouted slogans, e.g. “LEIU go away / Our civil rights are here to stay.” Lots of chaotic, youthful energy. One person encouraged people to walk on an American flag he had thrown on the street. I’m going, “Oh no, just the image we want the media to capture.” Angry, vocal, but peaceful.

Once we reached the block with the hotel it became obvious that the police were taking us seriously. They were all decked out in riot gear and there were lots of them - mostly on bicycles but there were a few on horses as well. There was a line of police at every intersection, every alley and between the street and the building.

The march didn’t really have an endpoint. We marched around the building and then I witnessed parts of two arrests at the corner of Pike and 4th. The action was over so quickly I had no idea of the reasons the young men were arrested. Someone I talked to said that some cops also took off after a woman protester.

I meandered back around to the 5th Avenue side of the building where we basically camped out in the street. It was noisy - kids were drumming on the railings separating them from the police, and the police behaved with forbearance. They just let the crowd be, and although vocal it remained nonviolent. Some young person then burned an American flag to loud cheers. By this point I found my friend, a security volunteer, and both of us hoped that the KING camera person was looking somewhere else. Then another young man climbed up on a shelf about 8 feet above the street. He took a flag and attempted to set it on fire and succeeded in burning holes in it, to cheers from the crowd. I noticed that despite the cheers, he was very careful when he dropped the pieces - he didn’t throw them across the crowd, he dropped them carefully to make sure nobody would get hurt.
Yet still the police maintained their presence professionally and did nothing to inflame the situation.

Shortly after the young man dropped off the overhang into the crowd we were told we had two minutes to move to start clearing the street. My friend and I were in the back line between the police and the crowd, and a woman with a megaphone started urging the crowd forward. We started moving and suddenly several police darted into the crowd to capture a young man. They were so fast that unfortunately they didn’t look where they were going and they knocked over a man in a motorized wheelchair. This action, of course, inflamed the crowd - the first of several provocative maneuvers by the cops.

I sat down near the chair to make space. At first the man looked badly hurt because he was just lying on the street without moving, but eventually he was helped back into his chair to the accompaniment of streams of pepper spray from the cops, and he was allowed to leave. Of course the cops were of no help.

We got the march moving slowly again, to occasional bursts of pepper spray. At this point the crowd, though still peaceful, was much angrier and the chant “This is what Democracy looks like!” morphed into “This is what a police state looks like!”
I twice saw orange traffic cones being thrown towards the cops, and once or twice a ball of wadded-up paper. I ditched my “Wage Peace” sign on the front grill of a parked police car. I was somewhat surprised to see that all its glass was intact and it hadn’t been damaged. I saw a stand-off between a police officer with a strange looking gun - maybe a taser - and several protesters. Fortunately the officer didn’t fire, preventing a potentially really nasty situation.

There was another line of cops at the end of the block - Union Street - and it was unclear whether or not they would allow us to leave. They did allow us to turn the corner onto Union and then again north onto Fourth.

At this point, even though we were moving back to Westlake Park in a controlled way, the police decided to hurry us up. Without provocation they let loose further streams of pepper spray, accompanied by several concussion grenades. We were going by the back side of the hotel at this time and it seemed maybe the cops were putting on a show for the conferees inside.

This was by far the most reckless act by the cops. It could have panicked the crowd, which had been purposefully walking back to Westlake Park. People did start running and they were very upset. Thankfully, the crowd didn’t panic. We behaved with our own discipline. Nobody who was hurt by the pepper spray was neglected. People took care of each other spontaneously, or they found medics “armed” with spray bottles filled with maalox and water. I was somewhat annoyed but I was not in the direct line of spray, and I was saved from serious exposure by my eyeglasses. Another advantage of glasses over contacts!

Once I reached Westlake Park I looked around for my friend, then I called her husband to let him know what was happening, and a little while later I walked back to my car as I saw the bicycle cops massing in front of the Westlake Mall. I’m not usually afraid to walk the streets alone, but this time I made sure I was in a crowd all the way back to my car. I mentioned this to someone, and they said, “Who are you afraid of?” My answer: “The cops!”



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