Seattle’s Chaos Shortens Career of Police Chief

Police Chief Norm Stamper said Tuesday that he will step down, a week after his outnumbered officers watched helplessly as mobs of World Trade Organization protesters rampaged through downtown Seattle--leaving behind $19 million in damage and lost retail sales.

“By making it clear that my role in the department is not one of self-interest, I will be able to make the most positive contribution as I oversee and participate in a review of . . . the events that took place on Seattle’s streets,” the 54-year-old Stamper said in announcing he will take early retirement in March.

It has been a week of recriminations in a city that has always prided itself on its civility and tolerance of debate. Much of the criticism--from the public and officers themselves--has centered on Stamper and Mayor Paul Schell. Both have said that they did not deploy a massive interagency police force at the beginning of the WTO talks because they wanted to leave room for legitimate protest. Schell adamantly declared he will not resign.

“I’m not going to step down. I’m going to see this through,” Schell said at a news conference at the police chief’s side. “The whole community’s hurting. I’m hurting. And I think it’s time to understand what happened, what we can learn from it as a community. And before we start assigning guilt . . . let’s get the facts together.”

City Council members have said they will appoint a committee with subpoena powers to determine what city leaders knew or should have known before the protests and how they responded.

“We should not fall back into our old pattern of someone saying, ‘It’s OK, don’t worry about it,’ ” Council Member Nick Licata said. “We need to say, ‘Thank you very much. Now where’s the paper trail?’ ”

Stamper and Schell have been criticized for both failing to foresee the vehemence of the protests and for subsequently unleashing a massive police crackdown that resulted in volleys of tear gas, pepper spray and rubber pellets whistling through the streets and in multiple allegations of police brutality.

The police chief, a five-year veteran of the 1,600-member force who formerly was deputy chief in San Diego, has said the city was betrayed by protesters. They had pledged, Stamper said, to engage in nonviolent marches and limited civil disobedience but wound up being joined by hundreds of violent protesters who engaged in vandalism and looting. What was to have been hundreds of people seeking to be arrested in front of the TV cameras turned out to be as many as 2,000, overwhelming the number of police officers on the street, the chief added.

But rank-and-file officers, breaking a week of silence on the demonstrations that resulted in a declared state of emergency and deployment of the National Guard, accused the city of under-preparing and leaving officers without adequate backup or even authorization to control the streets.

“We believe our law enforcement personnel did an outstanding job of overcoming the largest and most violent protests on American soil since the Vietnam era,” said Mike Edwards, president of the Seattle Police Guild.

But in an extraordinary and emotionally charged repudiation of the city’s management of the event, officers said inadequate planning left them standing against a mob without the means to protect themselves or the city.

“Most of us were babies during Vietnam in the ‘60s. We had no experience with this kind of thing, and to do a couple of days of training and say ‘Now you’re ready for that kind of thing’? I find that incredible,” said Ken Saucier, who teaches at the police academy but was deployed in the streets during the WTO protests.

“Sleep deprivation, food deprivation, no access to restroom facilities, forced to stand on hard surfaces for hours. Go to Amnesty International and ask them what the parameters for torture are. Those fit in those parameters,” Saucier said.

Describing an incident in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood in which a mob of protesters surrounded his patrol vehicle, Saucier said he was pelted with rocks and bottles.

“There were so many [protesters] on our vehicle that it went dark . . . it was like the street lights were blotted out,” he said. “I’ve been on the Police Department for 14 years, three years with SWAT. I’ve done undercover work, I’ve had guns pointed at me, and that was the scariest moment I’ve had with this department.”

“I found myself in a neighborhood I had patrolled for 15 years, wearing a gas mask, with fires in the street,” said Sgt. J.D. Miller, vice president of the police guild. “The word that keeps coming to mind is ‘surreal.’ I still wake up at night and I’m trying to get people help, I’m trying to get units where we need them.

“But [in the end] we returned safe streets to the people of Seattle.”

Police guild spokesmen said that happened in large part because mid-level officers on the streets began taking control themselves.

Edwards said Stamper’s announcement alleviated plans to call for a vote of no-confidence in the chief, but it “does not absolve the city from its responsibility for a complete investigation.”

Stamper said the decision to move up his retirement date was made in order to assure that he won’t be perceived as a man trying to preserve his job. But City Council members--who are expected to appoint an investigative panel next week--have made it clear it is the mayor, not just the police chief, they are targeting.

Licata has called for a review of the mayor’s broad authority. And Jan Drago, another council member, said Schell had “a flawed strategy” that needed to be examined.

Stamper’s retirement “does not fix the problem. It removes the focus from pointing blame at a particular person and distributes the focus to more systematic problems,” Licata said.

Tonight, members of the public will be allowed to vent their irritation and outrage in a special hearing.

One of the strongest sources of anger is likely to be the Capitol Hill neighborhood, which has called its own meeting Thursday night to discuss breaking away from the city in the wake of a police crackdown that resulted in tear gas and rubber pellets being used on citizens in their own yards.

“It went badly,” said Scott Jamieson, president of the Capitol Hill Community Council, which had been among the strongest proponents of Stamper’s resignation.

“It dawned on me last week that everything we had worked for so hard--in taking Seattle’s most liberal, left-of-center community and helping turn it into the most pro-public safety community at the same time--was out the window,” Jamieson said. “But Stamper . . . is not to be the absolute scapegoat for the city’s policy.”

And more ominously for the mayor, downtown merchants--traditionally among Schell’s strongest supporters--have complained bitterly about the Police Department’s failure to stop vandals from smashing shop windows at places like the Gap, Niketown and local jewelers and banks.

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Times researcher Lynn Marshall contributed to this story.