KPLU Local News
(2009-11-25)
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PRELUDE TO THE BATTLE
It was a few days before the start of the World Trade Organization meeting. Seattle Police Captain Jim Pugel and one of his lieutenants got together for dinner with a couple of protest leaders.
Jim Pugel: We went down to the Honey Court in Chinatown, had a great Chinese meal.
One of his dinner companions that night was activist John Sellers, head of the Ruckus Society, based in Berkeley.
John Sellers: They were just asking how many buses they should have to ferry arrestees back and forth to get processed.
Now, while this may sound strange, the police and protesters getting together before an act of civil disobedience, it wasn't at all unusual. In fact, it had become the norm to work things out ahead of time. Pugel says for several decades police had been doing what were called choreographed arrests.
Jim Pugel: They'd get to block traffic for 20 minutes. Then, as agreed, we'd ceremoniously put handcuffs on them, put them on the bus, drive the bus up to the precinct and let them all go to work."
So at the dinner in Chinatown, Pugel asked the activists, "What do you think? Should we be ready to arrest 200 or 300 people?" John Sellers and his companion nodded politely, but underneath the table they were kicking each other.
John Sellers: "It was one of those moments where we're like, wow, they are not ready. They do not have a response commensurate with what's coming at them.
And Sellers had no intention of telling them. At that point he knew that the thousands of protesters he'd been helping to train in direct action would have the element of surprise when they descended on the city to shut down the WTO.
THE CONFRONTATION
Around 5a.m., November 30th, 1999, Seattle Police Captain Jim Pugel briefed and deployed his officers. Very quickly, reports started coming in of protest groups amassing in various locations.
Pugel: And by 8:30 it was the loudest noise I'd ever heard from all directions.
He said you could hear chanting, yelling, and the occasional bottle breaking.
Pugel: You also could hear officers who were afraid because they had never seen anything like this."
As the groups arrived downtown they proceeded with amazing efficiency to block intersections by lying down in the street or chaining themselves to each other or using any number of tactics. From John Sellers perspective things were going great.
John Sellers: For a couple of hours it was like we won, we won. This place is sealed like a can.
Seattle police had done riot control training. Still, the sheer number of anti-WTO actions going on all over the place at once was overwhelming.
Jim Pugel: By that time we were surrounded and we had gone into a defensive mode.
John Sellers: You could see the escalation happening in the cops faces.
And this was before the anarchists showed up and started breaking windows. On Union Street, John Sellers was in the crowd as police began to fire tear gas.
John Sellers: And it just became super frightening. You coudn't breathe. It was just crazy.
Jim Pugel: We were getting calls from police for back up.
Eventually, Pugel says, the tear gas did what it was intended to do, it let police regain control of the streets.
Jim Pugel: It doesn't look pretty, it's not attractive, it's not healthy for a political career, but it gets people out of the way.
When everything was said and done, though, the protesters had made their point. There was even a sympathetic Hollywood movie made called Battle in Seattle. Even Police captain Jim Pugel had to admire the protesters actions from a sheer military tactics standpoint.
Jim Pugel: "It was gorgeous. It was phenomenal."
And he vowed it would never happen again.
THE AFTERMATH
After 1999, Pugel and other Seattle police commanders were invited to consult with cities all over the country where controversial events were expected to attract protests.
Lesson #1: Isolate the venue. Don't let protesters get too close. That's exactly what Washington D.C. did when the World Bank met there shortly after the Seattle protests.
Jim Pugel: They shut down the subways. They allowed no public transportation.
Lesson #2: Before the thing starts try and arrest the leaders.
Jim Pugel: It's just good old "The Art of War 101."
In 2000, right before the start of the GOP national convention in Philadelphia, Pugel made sure that police there had a photo of Ruckus Society's John Sellers. Philly police identified him on the street and picked him up for jaywalking. He spent the convention in jail on a one million dollar bond.
As for the protesters, Sellers says, they've been a victim of their success in Seattle.
John Sellers: Everybody wants to shut down the next big bad thing. People say shut it down, shut it down. But we don't have the element of surprise anymore. It's like a ballet that they know all the steps to now.
And he says, since the 9/11 terrorists attacks, the tolerance for civil disobedience has waned. He remembers being in New York Harbor right before the start of the Iraq war. His group rented a boat and launched two weather balloons with the words "Bush, Don't attack Iraq."
John Sellers: We were boarded by Navy Seals and it you would have thought we had a thermonuclear device with us.
Direct action, he says, came to be seen by much of the country as unpatriotic. He says a lot of people in their 20s and 30s turned to democratic politics, many working to elect President Barack Obama. © Copyright 2012, KPLU
