New York Times January 5, 2000 Seattle Will Drop Most of Trade Protest Cases
By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK
SEATTLE, Jan. 4 -- Seattle officials said today that they were dropping all but about 40 of the unresolved misdemeanor cases stemming from the tumultuous street protests of the World Trade Organization meeting here a month ago.
At least a few protesters said they opposed the city's move because they hoped to use their trials to showcase the city's mishandling of the demonstrations, which grew so raucous and tense that the National Guard was called in and the police used tear gas and rubber pellets to disperse the crowds.
All told, there were about 600 arrests during the protests, which began on Nov. 30 and continued for much of the week, attracting an estimated 35,000 demonstrators who contend that the global trade organization undermines health, labor and environmental standards.
A small number of people, many of them self-described anarchists, used the protests to smash windows, spray-paint graffiti and loot stores downtown. City officials said felony charges would not be dismissed against those protesters.
Of 525 people who faced misdemeanor charges, about 210 have had their cases resolved through "guilty pleas, diversions and dismissals," the city attorney, Mark Sidran, said in a statement released today.
But for most of the remaining cases, Mr. Sidran said, prosecutors decided it would be difficult to prove the charges. In many cases, demonstrators were rounded up and bused for mass processing, but a trial would probably require that an individual officer provide evidence of why a particular protester had been arrested. Complicating matters further, many protesters did not initially give their real names to the police, instead identifying themselves only as John Doe, Jane WTO or, in at least one case, Emiliano Zapata.
There was sufficient evidence to meet the legal standard for arresting and charging the protesters, Mr. Sidran said, but "a review of available evidence has led to the conclusion that the prosecution would be unable to meet its burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."
For some protesters, and perhaps for the city at large, still struggling to move beyond what was largely considered to be a civic fiasco, the dismissal of charges was treated as good news. But some protesters said they were disappointed because they wanted to be put on trial.
"I was looking forward to it, on a personal level," said David Hyde, 27, a graduate student in political sociology at the University of Washington, who was arrested on Dec. 1 for failure to disperse and pedestrian interference (blocking the street), which were by far the two most common misdemeanor charges lodged against protesters.
"At a trial I would have liked to talk about free speech and the suppression of free speech that happened here, and the sorts of parallels that suppression has to the way the World Trade Organization works."
Still, other protesters and their lawyers said they were glad to learn of the dismissals, which they said simply buttressed their contention that the charges never should have been brought in the first place.
"There were so many things that were wrong in this situation," said Michael Kolker, the lawyer for two defendants whose charges are almost certain to be dropped under the terms of today's announcement. "The mayor was wrong to issue the no-protest-zone order, the Seattle police were wrong to arrest people pursuant to the order, and then the city attorney's office was wrong to pursue the charges. The police reports were totally inadequate and confusing and mixed-up and basically totally meaningless."
The no-protest zone, covering about 30 downtown blocks, was ordered by Mayor Paul Schell, a move that civil-liberties groups here still hope to have ruled unconstitutional. The dismissals will hardly bring closure to the riots, a source of continuing civic angst. The City Council is beginning inquiries and other legal cases are pending, including the constitutional challenge to Mayor Schell's no-protest order.
Several protesters and bystanders say they plan to sue the city for mistreatment by the police, and some police officers in turn have said they will sue the city for leaving them ill-equipped to deal with the throngs. The heads of two major police officers' organizations have called for Mr. Schell to resign, which he says he has no intention of doing.