Capitol Hill Community Groups Blast Police WTO Action

By Mark Taylor

"I was so shocked by what police were doing, that I locked the doors to the bookstore. I was actually afraid that they may enter the business and assault people inside."

Guerriero says there was no way to avoid the tear gas inside the building, since gas masks had been made illegal by Mayor Paul Schell's Civil Emergency Order. Two concussion grenades were launched at the windows of the bookstore. He describes the scene as a "war zone."

Similar stories are told by other residents, business owners and their employees in the Capitol Hill community.

Many residents, including myself, were confused about what was going on. We had no information from authorities and no way of knowing that we were subject to arrest or assault just for being on the street near our homes.

The sense that the community had been targeted by law enforcement was evident in the many hours of testimony gathered at a Capitol Hill Community Council hearing in December. Residents were targeted for abuse and assaults on a somewhat random but large-scale basis. Being a protester was not the only qualification required for police abuse--just being in the neighborhood made citizens fair game for a twisted kind of sporting event by officers from county, city and regional police departments.

A series of public hearings on the 1999 WTO Ministerial Conference brought out hundreds of citizens to testify before the Seattle City Council. 1,000 complaints were filed with the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild. Dozens of civil suits and claims have been made against the city for injuries and constitutional rights violations resulting from the city's handling of the WTO conference.

In the midst of this overwhelming public outcry, the Seattle City Council passed resolution 30100, creating the WTO Accountability Review Committee (ARC). Council members Jim Compton, Jan Drago and Nick Licata were assigned oversight of the review, which included three panels composed of people from the community whom the council members chose. Compton was already chairperson for the Public Safety Committee. He was subsequently appointed by the council to head the entire WTO investigation, including oversight of Panel #3, the most politically sensitive panel since it dealt with the events on the streets during the WTO conference.

From the very beginning of the investigation, journalists and activists cried foul. They described the WTO ARC as an underfunded, understaffed and ineffective review with conflicts of interest and with too much power vested in Jim Compton's office. As a result of these concerns, the Citizens Committee for Local Government Accountability (CCLGA) was formed in February, 2000 by members of the community to serve as a public interest watchdog group and to provide oversight and assist the city's investigation by providing information to the panels. One of the main concerns of the CCLGA was that not enough attention was being paid to the 20 hours of public testimony, especially pertaining to the events on Capitol Hill.

Panel #3 held executive sessions for months. In some cases, media and members of the public were forced to leave the room while the panels discussed issues which they were not willing to share with the public. Over the course of this very difficult relationship, the CCLGA had to fight just to be allowed to attend panel meetings. They and the Interfaith Committee of the Church Council of Greater Seattle were forced to stage protests inside the city council chambers to demand accountability and full public disclosure. A series of letters were delivered to Jim Compton along with a petition with 500 signatures demanding that the WTO ARC investigate hundreds of complaints of constitutional rights violations by law enforcement and the public officials during the WTO conference.

After months of ignoring the citizens' watchdog group, Compton finally agreed to meet with CCGLA members. During heated discussions, Compton declined to address issues of individual police misconduct, human rights abuses inside the King County Jail, or assaults on bystanders by police, especially in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. He admitted that he had been remiss in not answering our requests for information and he promised do some quick last minute interviews of residents of Capitol Hill before the city's report was released. All in all, the citizen's watchdog group was not impressed. In the final report, these issues are still not dealt with adequately. Some of the issues CCLGA raised were not mentioned at all--including the gas mask prohibition, the beating of homeless citizens, the events on Capitol Hill and abuses inside the jails.

The Citizen's Committee For Local Government Accountability has released its own citizen's report on the WTO debacle. The Capitol Hill Community Council (CHCC) is planning an open forum on the WTO issue. Civil and class action suits have been filed and more are being prepared. My work with the CHCC has taught me that the folks in that neighborhood have not forgotten how the city mothers and fathers treated their community during the WTO conference. Litigation may be the only way to hold our elected leaders accountable at this point. A class action suit against the city may help to keep the public's attention on issues of accountability. The citizens of this city must make it very clear that we will not tolerate the violation of fundamental constitutional rights so that corporate interests can throw a big party at the taxpayer's expense!

Our city should take the lead in legislation preventing these kinds of mass violations of civil rights and set an important precedent for the rest of the nation. Remember, Seattle--

"The Whole World Is Watching You!"

For information on how to get a copy of the CCGLA report, "A Citizen's Report on the WTO and the Seattle City Council Review" send an e-mail message to: seattleaccountability@yahoo.com It should be available on the web by the time of this printing. Mark Taylor is a member of the Canfield Citizen's Committee For Local Government Accountabilty.

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