SEATTLE, Washington -- Outnumbered and outspirited by an army of anti-World Trade Organization protesters, the Seattle Police Department are fighting random violence with an arsenal of sublethal weapons.
Eyewitnesses reported the department used rubber bullets, tear gas grenades, handheld pepper-spray canisters, and invisible paint to impose order.
The anti-WTO protests turned hectic early Tuesday. Starting at about 6 a.m., activists began closing down downtown streets with sit-ins, lock-downs, and marches. By 8 a.m., every street leading to the Seattle Conference Center, where the WTO was trying to meet, had been sealed off by activists or police responding to the protests. Police slowly attempted to secure a route between downtown hotels and the conference center.
As darkness fell Tuesday on a day of violent demonstrations in the city, Washington state Governor Gary Locke agreed to send in the National Guard to remove anti-WTO protesters, local television reported.
According to KIRO Channel 7 television, the governor was responding to a request by Seattle Mayor Paul Schell, who said earlier that he was declaring a 7 p.m. curfew after protesters threw the first day of the WTO meeting into confusion.
Seattle's new armored personnel carrier has been conspicuous behind police lines all week. On Tuesday it was used as a launch pad for tear-gas and rubber bullet attacks.
Lines of riot police faced off with the demonstrators, and when riot squads tired of the confrontation, officers in gas masks, black body armor, and helmets launched tear gas grenades and handheld spray canisters into the crowd. The crowd cheered as the wind switched direction and blew the tear gas back onto the police lines. Dozens of protesters were wearing gas masks.
"Police dressed all in black -- with no identification other than the numbers on their helmets -- started pushing through the crowd with their nightsticks up," said Mary Pjerou, a 54-year-old redwoods protection activist protesting WTO rules that allow the export of raw logs. "We don’t know if they were Seattle police. They then started shooting demonstrators in the back with plastic bullets, spraying pepper spray over their heads, and some people were clubbed."
Chief of police Norm Stamper insisted pepper spray was used only when people "became aggressive, tried to charge police lines, things like that."
Although police refused to confirm the use of rubber bullets, a Wired News reporter recovered two half-inch diameter black rubber balls that hit some of the protesters. Stamper insisted they were aerosol weapons.
"If you squeeze that, we’ll all have to leave the room right now," Stamper warned.
Swiss activist Oliver DeMarcellus escaped injury when his eyeglasses were struck by one of the rubber bullets.
"There was no order to disperse," DeMarcellus said.
Police were apparently targeting activist leaders, he added. "The guy next to me was a speaker at the rally [Monday] at McDonalds."
Authorities also refused to confirm reports that invisible paint had been used to mark some of the protesters. Two separate groups of youths claimed they were attacked without warning by plainclothes police. A friend of one of the victims overheard one of the officers say the youths had been "tagged."
Later, a police department attorney witnessed two men, apparently plainclothes officers, attack a pair of protestors. Authorities told the attorney the demonstrators had been marked, although she saw no trace of paint.
Portable freeway railings have proved effective, if low-tech, street barricades. Too heavy to be pushed over by trucks, the railings have been able to contain protesters who have dismantled chainlink fences, flanked police lines, and smashed windows in downtown stores.
The protestors have gathered in Seattle from around the world to demand that the WTO be reformed or abolished. In the United States, the WTO has angered environmentalists by weakening the Clean Air Act and eliminating legal protections for dolphins and sea turtles. It has also enraged labor unionists, who maintain trade barriers are needed to prevent the loss of jobs to offshore workers. Right-wingers opposed to the WTO claim the organization of 143 nations threatens national sovereignty.
