More Police Violence on Capitol Hill

by conform 4:51am Thu Dec 2 '99

Police invaded Capitol Hill again tonight, violently attacking people in front of their homes. I just returned from Capitol Hill, a dense residential area where, for the second night in a row, police used tear gas and rubber bullets (I got souveniers!) in an attempt to disperse a crowd that was peaceful and frustrated. I estimate that at it's peak there were at least 3,000 protesters, mostly neighborhood residents who were angry that they were being treated like criminals.

The police hospitalized a number of protesters, tear gassed virtually everyone, and repeatedly asserted that everyone there was guilty of "unlawful assembly", because some protesters were standing in the street (most of the standoff was spent on a quiet side street, though the early beatings occurred on the main street in the neighborhood). The protesters made it very clear that all they wanted was for the police to go home so that they could go home. They chanted "you go home, we go home" and "whose streets? our streets". A King County Council Member attempted to negotiate with the cops but was told that they had no interest in any resolution other than everyone dispersing immediately.

Whatever feelings I have about curfews and no-protest zones, I think this is intolerable. The word that best describes the scene in my mind was 'invasion'. To enter a residential neighborhood where a small crowd is peacefully gathered and create a sitution where hundreds of passers-by are tear-gassed and many people are prevented from going home (due to the arbitrary nature of where the police took up their position), and then to blame it on the protesters, is criminal. And the worst part is, I am afraid the media is going to ignore the story.

These are the things the police did wrong: 1. Sending riot cops 2. Initiating violence against protesters 3. Failing to realize that their withdrawl would put an immediate end to the situation. 4. Tear-gassing eveything that moved

It was wonderful to see that there were many hundreds of people who came out to protest when they realized what was going on. I spoke to a number of locals who told me they didn't care about WTO protests, but they weren't going to stand for police telling them that the streets and sidewalks in front of their homes were off limits. This is two nights in a row that police have attacked peaceful protesters in this neighborhood, and I suspect that if it happens again the protesters may attempt to take direct action against the cops.

From: Independent Media Center
http://www.indymedia.org