> Comrade Chuck, for some reason you are buying the official line on why the
> riot happened but you are just dead wrong on the numbers. There were,
> unquestionably, PLENTY of police on the streets of Seattle and if you had
> been living here before the protest, as I was, you would know that their
> preparations were extensive, if misguided. Not only did they take the
> protesters seriously, they took them far too seriously as a threat. People
> closed their businesses downtown that day because the cops created such a
> feeling on panic in town in the days before the protest.
I'm buying the oifficial line on why the riot happened? The official line is "we didn't have enough officers because we didn't respect the protesters?" This makes as much sense as the stuff I see on Fox News.
Look, dude, perhaps you should spend some time protesting in a large city. Seattle didn't have many cops on the streets, not to the point that the big cities like NYC and DC do it. If the police want to control the streets during a riot situation, they put more people on the streets. The Seattle police clearly didn't take the situation seriously enough to call in police reinforcements from the West Coast, until after day 1.
> Chuck, were you even out here? Seattle was not a "general riot" and the
> protest was absolutely typical stuff. The labor march had already finished
> when the violence broke out. The remaining marchers were very typical
> leftists. Yes, they had the model of the recent European protests in their
> minds but the anarchists only broke a few windows and threw some things.
> The trouble started when the cops went nuts.
No, I wasn't there, but I followed the situation closely and did interviews afterwards with anarchists had been on the streets. Obviously, if you were there on the streets, it didn't help you understand the situation. It looks like I have a more accurate take on what happened and I was clear across the continent.
Again, the cops went nuts before the anarchists went on their march. I'd point out that this was just a small contingent of anarchists who were in the streets that day. Other anarchists were blocking the streets and got pepper-sprayed and other diverted part of the union march into the riot zone.
Seattle turned into a general riot later on N30, when the police marched around Seattle firing gas on people with folks fighting back.
> "The cops may have gone around doing drills, but that doesn't change the
> fact that they didn't employ enough officers in the streets. This was
> because they didn't take activists seriously. The J18 riot in Eugene was
> on the minds of the Seattle police, but apparently not enough for them
> to plan accordingly."
>
> Once again, you are just wrong and the numbers bear me out. There were
> more than enough police to do the job. While people put the total protest
> at 35 to 50 thousand total marchers, that was always a stretch. Given the
> fact that the labor march finished well before the WTO protest proper got
> under way, there were PLENTY OF COPS. Again, many departments handle
> bigger, rowdier crowds with many fewer officers. Moreover, there was more
> than one encounter with the Oregon anarchists on the minds of the police and
> they absolutely did react accordingly - if misguidedly.
I'm sorry, but you are just wrong on this. The Seattle police department did NOT have enough officers for N30. You can engage in this fantasy about a few officers being superhuman policers of activists, but in reality it takes many more officers to do crowd control. Just look at the numbers of New York City cops that they use to corral protesters. New York city cops, for the most part, are an example of a police department that is well-prepared for crowd control. There simply weren't plenty of cops in Seattle.
I've studied this quite closely in order to plan protests here in Washington.
> Chuck, the "black bloc" was camped out in a squat right by my
> girlfriend's office. They were no great menace and they were young.
> Everybody knew the plots and plans of the marchers in advance. They were
> all over the news.
Hello? Do you ever LISTEN? I've talked to member of the Seattle black bloc and they were older than people think. Perhaps the contingent camped near your girlfriend were young, but this wasn't the only contingent of anarchists who participated in the black bloc.
The plots and plans of the union march and the civil disobedience wereknown in advance. The black bloc plans were not.
> Chuck, you just don't know what you're talking about. You really don't.
SOrry, but you are the ones having severe problems with reality here.
> The problem basically started when protestors were (peacefully) breaking
> through the malformed barricade of buses the police had put up on the route
> the delegates were to take. As the delegates and protesters came together,
> things got tense. But instead of withdrawing behind the buses and arresting
> people as they came under or between them (which would have been reasonable)
> a bunch of the cops on top of the buses and started firing pepper-spray
> pellets into the crowd as some anarchists and rowdy kids started throwing
> things from the back of the crowd and breaking windows. The more the cops
> fired the pellets, the more people threw things. Most importantly, the
> rock-throwers and window-breakers realized that the cops had nobody in the
> crowd or behind it to arrest them. This led to a large group of non-violent
> protesters being caught in an increasing crossfire and naturally they got
> more and more angry. That pattern of catching people between police riot
> lines and rock-throwers continued throughout the day.
Oh, so NOW you explain which rock throwers you are talking about. This incident may have happened, but I doubt if it was enough to get the police started on pepper-spraying people. The police were able to move around quite easily, but there was so many people that some of their standard operations were bogged down. The protesters had wanted to be mass arrested and thrown in jail. The police tried to do that--one of my friends was handcuffed four times--but couldn't move anybody out of the zone. I would argue that the polcie frustration with the situation was the motivation for them going out of control.
This stuff about being caught in th ecorssfire sounds like peace nazi stuff. Were you one of the assholes who tried to turn people into the police for property destruction?
> To prove my point, the same thing happened at the Mardi Gras riots months
> later. The Seattle cops stupidly used the same military-style riot lines
> rather than well-established methods of crowd control. It ended up costing a
> kid his life as he was murdered while the cops stood by in their ridiculous
> formations.
This only shows that the police were poorly trained and understaffed.
Chuck0