To whom...,
The central point this Seattle Times article misses is that there was absolutely no reason 400 Seattle police plus the county Sheriff's officers and State Troopers they had in town from Monday onwards (some reserves were already here, their cars were everywhere) shouldn't have been able to handle the protesters without things getting out of control. The Metropolitain Police in England use four hundred officers for a Premier League football match. That's a bigger crowd with a far more dangerous history. The Daytona Beach police department number a couple hundred and they patrol Spring Break and the notorious Bike Week. I personally spoke to the police chief of Sturgis, South Dakota who coordinates law enforcement for the Sturgis Rally every year. His town hosts three to four *hundred thousand* BIKERS (including all the outlaw clubs) for an entire week, making the rally possibly the largest single event in North America. His direct quote was "If I had what Seattle has, my job would be a piece of cake."
The story of WTO-Seattle is a story of police incompetence and it's just being ignored. Any serious police force could have dealt with the WTO protests without antagonizing the crowd into violence or letting a couple dozen anarchists and local downtown layabouts put the entire city into a state of panic. The Seattle Police didn't lose control of the streets. They incited a a mob to riot.
God bless 'em
peace