By KERY MURAKAMI SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The King County Sheriff's Office warned Seattle police months before the World Trade Organization conference that the city should prepare for violent protests.
But for some reason Seattle police ignored "clear indications" of massive civil disobedience, and as a result were overwhelmed when it came.
In a document obtained yesterday by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Sheriff's Capt. Larry Mayes noted "there was no plan, right up to the end . . . (Maj. William) Dickinson offered our resources each day and was rebuffed right up until the time the (expletive) hit the fan. SPD still felt nothing would happen as of Monday."
The mass anti-WTO protests and violent police reaction started Tuesday, Nov. 30.
Mayes' notes were written in February as part of a debriefing for top sheriff's office officials. That session helped form the basis for the agency's self-assessment of what went wrong in the police response to the WTO riots. A draft of that report, dated March 3, was released to the city and obtained, with other documents, by the P-I.
The assessment is damning.
"Though intelligence reports prior to the WTO predicted a significant level of civil unrest, it appeared that when the predictions were realized, (Seattle Police Department) commanders were unprepared or unwilling to deal with them," the sheriff's office report reads. "As events unfolded, it was clear that SPD had no plan to respond to the development of what was 'not supposed to happen.'"
Now-retired Assistant Police Chief Ed Joiner, who was in charge of Seattle police WTO preparations, has said police didn't know how seriously to take threats to shut down the conference. He has said he thought it was just rhetoric.
But the sheriff's report, as well as a Seattle Fire Department assessment released last week, show that Seattle police brass not only ignored the warnings from protesters but also intelligence reports from other agencies.
Well before the conference, Fire Department officials told police they were planning for "an explosive atmosphere that could ignite into civil unrest" and suggested that the police do the same.
And sheriff's office brass describe themselves as being "scared" enough by early crowd estimates that they did their own intelligence gathering.
Those reports, the agency says in its self-assessment, "clearly indicated that the WTO security plans clearly needed to accommodate potential disruptions, including large numbers of demonstrators trained to disrupt secured events . . . willing to go to jail for their cause, and . . . from fringe elements willing to be or planning to be violent."
Seattle police spokeswoman Christie-Lynne Bonner declined comment, saying the department has not seen the report and is still working on its own self-assessment. The city police "after-action report" is due in a couple of weeks.
Sheriff's spokesman John Urquhart also declined comment, saying the report was a first draft that has not been reviewed for accuracy and was given to the City Council in error.
But other documents obtained by City Council investigators show the city voiced concerns about WTO preparations six months before the conference.
In a May 14, 1999, memo obtained by council investigators, King County Sheriff's Capt. Ray Griffin described the Police Department's worries:
"I met with SPD May 13, 1999, and while they are attempting not to get hysterical and overreact, their intelligence gathering indicates that a serious effort is being made over the Internet to amass a significant number of demonstrators at Seatrade (the police code name for the conference). This is somewhere between 10,000 & 50,000 and they seemed worried if only half of this effort is fulfilled SPD's resources will not be enough."
According to the draft assessment, the county initially offered Seattle 114 trained Civil Response Team deputies, as well as the sheriff's department airplane, K-9 unit, bomb disposal unit and motorcycle officers.
But Seattle said it wanted only the 114 riot officers.
"We offered 200, but they only wanted 100," Urquhart said yesterday.
The report noted that the sheriff's office did not get a request for assistance until July, leaving only four months to train and equip the officers.
The report was given to the City Council-appointed committee examining WTO preparations.
Speaking for the committee, member Sister Kathleen Pruitt said the report raises some concerns, but she didn't want to draw any conclusions without further research.
Added committee member Angela Toussaint:
"If it's true that they knew how many people were coming, the question is why didn't they prepare for it.":
