Seattle Police ‘Patient’ With WTO Protesters, Chief Says

Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske on Friday praised and defended his officers who first watched, then cracked down on, demonstrations marking the first anniversary of the World Trade Organization meeting here.

The arrests downtown of 140 people Thursday night began after a thrown marble or ball bearing injured a police captain and officers reported seeing people tossing rocks and bottles. The captain was treated at a hospital and released.

The day had started peacefully with about 2,000 people demonstrating. As night fell, fewer than 200 remained and the mood had changed, Kerlikowske said.

“They were people bent on causing a problem,” he told a Friday morning news conference.

Police dressed in riot gear ordered the crowd to disperse, then surrounded protesters and made arrests. “I saw them being very patient,” Kerlikowske said of his officers, adding that about an hour passed between the first order to disperse and the arrests.

“There was more than adequate time for people to leave the middle of the street,” he said.

Randy Trefethern, a legal observer of the protests for the National Lawyers Guild, said police arrested a protester rolling a cigarette, mistaking it for marijuana, “and that set the crowd off. Things became very tense after that.”

Shortly after the press conference, shoppers fled a downtown shopping mall after a chemical believed to be pepper spray wafted through the building. Several minor injuries were reported.

A search of a bus tunnel that runs underneath the mall failed to find any canisters or other gas devices.

Five of those arrested Thursday were being held on felony charges, including an Edmonds, Wash., man suspected in the injury to the captain, police spokesman Clem Benton said. Most of the arrests were for failure to disperse, a misdemeanor.

At a news briefing, police displayed several weapons they said were seized from demonstrators, including knives, a pellet gun that resembled a standard revolver, and a placard mounted on a baseball bat.

Kerlikowske was hired as police chief earlier this year. The previous chief took early retirement after the chaotic WTO protests in 1999.