By Gene Johnson | The Associated Press
SEATTLE — Seattle’s police watchdog agency said Tuesday it is investigating the use of pepper spray to break up a fourth consecutive day of large protests over the George Floyd killing, a tactic that drew questions from some city leaders.
The protest Monday was largely peaceful but turned chaotic as officers dispersed the crowd at night using tear gas and flash-bang devices.
Authorities said demonstrators threw fireworks and tried to storm a barricade near a police station, but citizen video posted on Reddit and Facebook showed that the chaos began when an officer grabbed a pink umbrella that a demonstrator was holding just across a barricade. Other officers nearby then began spraying chemicals and firing flash-bangs.
Seattle’s Office of Police Accountability said Monday it has received about 12,000 complaints over the Seattle Police Department’s handling of the demonstrations and looting, including reports that a young girl was tear-gassed, officers placed their knees on the necks of two people who were being arrested, and protesters twice grabbed unattended rifles out of police cars before being disarmed by a television news crew’s security guard. Many of the incidents were captured on video.
On Tuesday, the agency said it was adding Monday night’s use of pepper spray to disperse the crowd to the long list of events it’s investigating. The agency, which is led by a civilian director and supervisors, uses civilian investigators as well as Seattle police sergeants to conduct its work, then presents its findings and recommendations to Police Chief Carmen Best.
“I am extremely concerned that the crowd management tactics that I have seen being used by the Seattle Police Department are just out of proportion,” Seattle City Council President Lorena González said in an interview.
Demonstrators in Washington and around the country have been protesting the killing of Floyd, a black man who died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for several minutes even after he stopped moving and pleading for air.
On Monday afternoon large crowds of protesters again gathered in downtown Seattle for speeches and to march through the city’s core.
Hundreds gathered outside City Hall and the crowd continued to grow as it made its way to the Capitol Hill neighborhood. At one point, officers took a knee with protesters in Capitol Hill in a show of solidarity.
North of downtown, near the University Village shopping mall, police barricaded a grocery store’s windows after some people smashed them.
In the Capitol Hill police declared the protests a riot about 9 p.m., saying the decision was made “after a crowd threw rocks, bottles and fireworks at officers and attempted to breach barricades one block from the East Precinct.”
That explanation drew criticism from protesters and some city leaders. City Council Member Teresa Mosqueda tweeted a link to overhead video taken by a witness and posted on Reddit, which did not show projectiles from the crowd or attempts to breach the barricade in the moments before the chaos began.
Instead, it showed an officer grabbing the umbrella, and other officers using pepper spray as the demonstrator and officer played tug-of-war with it across a metal barrier. “THIS IS NOT A RIOT,” Mosqueda tweeted.
González said the police and fire chiefs were due to discuss the demonstration response at a council meeting on Wednesday.
“We want to be able to get a better understanding of what the response was and has been,” she said. “My hope is that we’ll be able to correct course in a way that doesn’t eviscerate the trust we have spent so many years trying to rebuild with communities of color in our city.” ___
This story has been corrected to show that the police watchdog agency has received about 12,000 complaints, not 1,200.
