Tag: Black Lives Matter Seattle King County

Courts, Police

Judge Sanctions Seattle for Violating Order Limiting Use of Weapons Against Protesters
Protesters face Seattle Police officers at a protest in May 2020 (Creative Commons)

 By Paul Kiefer

On Thursday, US District Court Judge Richard Jones issued a decision on the penalties Seattle will face for violating a court order he issued last summer to restrict the Seattle Police Department’s use of “less-lethal” weapons at protests. Jones ordered the city to pay $81,997 to cover the attorneys’ fees for Black Lives Matter Seattle King County (BLMSKC), the plaintiffs who sued the city in September 2020 for violating the court order.

In his decision, Judge Jones rejected two of the city’s arguments—that SPD officers did not violate the injunction, and that if they did so, the violations were minor—while also barring the city from introducing “new facts justifying the violations” after Jones found the city in contempt of his order.

The city’s attorneys tried to introduce new evidence to justify their actions during the protests, a request Judge Jones wrote would turn the city’s control over the most relevant evidence—body-worn video and officer testimony— into “both sword and shield. A shield because, during the contempt proceedings, the City would only introduce the evidence that it sees fit and would ask the Plaintiffs and the Court to consider only that limited record.” Allowing BLMSKC, “out of fairness,” to obtain use-of-force reports and body-worn video that would support its point of view would mean “that these proceedings would be endless,” Jones wrote.

But Judge Jones’ ruling was not a resounding victory for BLMSKC and its legal team, which included attorneys from the ACLU of Washington, Seattle University Law School’s Korematsu Center, and the Seattle law firm Perkins Coie.

Though Jones swatted away arguments from the city’s attorneys that he should reverse his ruling that found the city in contempt of a federal court order, he also turned down sanctions BLMSKC proposed as tools to keep SPD in line with the court order in the future: requiring SPD to send BLMSKC use-of-force reports and body-worn video from “any incident in which SPD uses less-lethal weapons against protesters” within five days of the incident.

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Additionally, Jones slashed the city’s requested attorney’s fees by 65 percent, arguing that many of the attorneys’ hours were “excessive, redundant or unnecessary.”

Last June, BLMSKC filed the lawsuit that led Judge Jones to issue a temporary injunction prohibiting SPD officers from using blast balls, pepper spray, tear gas and other crowd control weapons against nonviolent protesters. After Judge Jones issued his initial injunction, BLMSKC returned to his court again in July to argue that SPD continued to use crowd control weapons against peaceful protesters; in lieu of a court hearing, the city’s attorneys and BLMSKC agreed to expand the injunction to explicitly forbid SPD officers from targeting journalists, medics and legal observers, as from using crowd control weapons to move nonviolent crowds.

But after SPD used crowd-control weapons, including flash bangs, against protesters in August and September, BLMSKC sued the city for violating the court order a second time. When Judge Jones ruled in BLMKSC’s favor in December, he pointed to four clear, documented cases in which SPD officers used blast balls and pepper spray in ways that violated his order by “a clear and convincing margin.” In that decision, he added that four well-documented violations were probably not the full extend of SPD’s breach of the court order; however, because the city didn’t provide body-worn video footage from several protests in August and September, he couldn’t confirm any other cases of misconduct. Continue reading “Judge Sanctions Seattle for Violating Order Limiting Use of Weapons Against Protesters” →

Courts, Police

Seattle Seeks Reversal of Contempt Order in “Less-Lethal” Weapons Case

By Paul Kiefer

On Monday, the office of city attorney Pete Holmes asked Federal District Court Judge Richard Jones to reverse his December 7 ruling that the city acted in contempt of a court order restricting the Seattle Police Department’s use of force at protests. In a motion filed with the Federal District Court of Western Washington, Holmes argued that Jones’ initial ruling held the city to an unreasonable standard for compliance with the court’s orders, and that the court lacked strong evidence to support the contempt ruling.

Judge Jones’ ruling was the result of a lawsuit filed in late September by a group of plaintiffs, chiefly Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County (BLMSKC), who alleged that SPD had failed to rein in its officers’ use of “less-lethal” weapons—particularly blast balls—at protests in the late summer and early fall. Specifically, the plaintiffs accused SPD of violating an injunction Judge Jones issued in July restricting officers’ use of force against peaceful demonstrators, journalists and legal observers.

In his December 7 decision, Jones didn’t accept the plaintiffs’ arguments outright, but he ruled that four clear instances in which SPD officers violated his injunction by using weapons such as blast balls “indiscriminately” against protesters was enough to place the city in contempt. Jones also noted in his ruling that these four documented cases were probably not the extent of SPD’s violations of his orders.

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If you’re reading this, we know you’re someone who appreciates deeply sourced breaking news, features, and analysis—along with guest columns from local opinion leaders, ongoing coverage of the kind of stories that get short shrift in mainstream media, and informed, incisive opinion writing about issues that matter. Earlier this month, we took a look back at just some of the work we’ve been able to do thanks to generous contributions from our readers, but those pieces represent just a handful of the hundreds of stories we’ve published this year.

We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different. We cover Seattle and King County on a budget that is funded entirely and exclusively by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

Being fully independent means that we cover the stories we consider most interesting and newsworthy, based on our own news judgment and feedback from readers about what matters to them, not what advertisers or corporate funders want us to write about. It also means that we need your support. So if you get something out of this site, consider giving something back by kicking in a few dollars a month, or making a one-time contribution, to help us keep doing this work. If you prefer to Venmo or write a check, our Support page includes information about those options. Thank you for your ongoing readership and support.

After Judge Jones ruled the city in contempt, the court gave BLMSKC and the other plaintiffs four days to propose sanctions for the city. Their proposals were mild: the plaintiffs suggested that the court require the city to distribute copies of Judge Jones’ December 7th opinion to all SPD officers, “accompanied by clear instructions about what conduct is prohibited”; send use-of-force reports to the plaintiffs within five days of any incident in which SPD uses less-lethal weapons against protesters; and pay the plaintiffs’ attorney fees, which totaled $263,708.

Continue reading “Seattle Seeks Reversal of Contempt Order in “Less-Lethal” Weapons Case” →

Courts, Mayor Durkan, Police

Federal District Court Judge Finds Seattle in Contempt of Crowd Control Injunction

By Paul Kiefer

On Monday, Federal District Court Judge Richard Jones found the city of Seattle in contempt of an injunction he issued in June forbidding the Seattle Police Department  from using force against peaceful protesters. According to Durkan spokesperson Kelsey Nyland, the ruling is the first contempt finding against the city in recent memory; within the next week, the court will begin considering possible penalties.

The contempt finding is the latest development in a protracted legal battle between the city and Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County (BLMSKC). Judge Jones first issued the injunction after BLMSKC and a group of individual plaintiffs, represented by attorneys from the ACLU of Washington, Seattle University School of Law’s Korematsu Center, and Seattle law firm Perkins Coie, sued the city and SPD for using excessive force in its response to the first wave of protests last summer. In June, Jones sided with BLMKSC and issued a temporary injunction prohibiting officers from using a variety of “less-lethal” weapons, including blast balls, pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets, against nonviolent protesters.  He also found that some officers had used force in response to the message of the protests themselves, not any perceived threat to their safety or to property.

A month later, BLMSKC returned to his court to ask Judge Jones to find SPD in contempt of the injunction after the department allegedly targeted journalists, medics and legal observers at a Capitol Hill protest on July 25. That motion never received a hearing; instead, the city’s attorneys and BLMSKC agreed to expand the injunction. The expanded court order explicitly prohibited SPD from targeting journalists, medics and legal observers, and it restricted officers’ use of less-lethal weapons even further; for instance, it forbade officers from using these weapons to move crowds.

Judge Jones’ new finding is the result of a second motion for contempt that BLMSKC filed against the city at the end of September. In the motion, the group’s attorneys alleged that SPD officers violated the new, more restrictive injunction during their responses to protests in August and September, including at a rally for Summer Taylor, a Seattle protester who died after being struck by a car, on August 26 and at a protest outside the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) headquarters on August 7.

David A. Perez, a partner at Perkins Coie, said in a statement after the ruling: “This ruling reaffirms that the basic principle that protesters have a right to exercise their First Amendment freedoms without fear that the City will retaliate with violence, and serves as a reminder that the City cannot violate the Court’s orders without consequences. We will continue to take violations of the Court’s orders seriously.”

“Asking the Court to find the City in contempt was not an easy decision on our part.  But after witnessing repeated and blatant violations of protesters’ constitutional rights, we had to act.  This ruling reaffirms that the basic principle that protesters have a right to exercise their First Amendment freedoms without fear that the City will retaliate with violence, and serves as a reminder that the City cannot violate the Court’s orders without consequences. We will continue to take violations of the Court’s orders seriously.”

According to Robert Christie, an outside attorney representing the city in the case, SPD’s actions were justified. In his arguments at a hearing on November 18, Christie said SPD officers were instructed to use less-lethal weapons in response to threats to their safety. The city’s legal team also argued that it wasn’t SPD’s fault if individual officers disobeyed the injunction. To shore up their claim, the team filed declarations from SPD commanders who described briefing their officers on the injunction before they responded protests.

In his ruling on Monday, Judge Jones categorically dismissed the city’s argument that it wasn’t liable for the actions of individual SPD officers. After calling the city’s arguments “novel and innovative,” he pointed out that “the City has already agreed that violations by individual officers are nonetheless violations of the [injunctions]” when it agreed to both previous court orders, setting the stage for his contempt findings.

Judge Jones’ decision to find the city in contempt rests on four instances in which the court determined that individual SPD officers used less-lethal weapons in violation of the court’s orders. Three of those violations involved officers using pepper spray and blast balls indiscriminately against protesters. In the final case, Judge Jones noted that SPD Lieutenant John Brooks, who frequently coordinates the department’s protest response, ordered an officer to use a blast ball to “create space” between officers and protesters; that, the judge wrote, was not a justified use of force.

While acknowledging that SPD’s tactics had become “more restrained” since June, Judge Jones was quick to emphasize that the four clear, documented violations were more than enough to justify his contempt ruling. “They were not at the boundary, overstepping ever so slightly or ‘technically,'” he wrote. “They violated the substantive terms of the Orders by a clear and convincing margin.” He added that the four clear violations were probably not the full extent of SPD’s breach of the court’s order, pointing out that the city hasn’t yet provided body-worn video footage from several protests that might reveal other misconduct.

Seattle is now the second city found in contempt of a federal court order limiting police officers’ use of force in protest management. On December 1st, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Marco Hernandez found the city of Portland in contempt of a similar injunction he issued on June 26th; that order also stemmed from a lawsuit against the city by a group of protesters at the beginning of last summer.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the city have until December 11th to send a proposal for consequences to the court, and the city can file a response to those suggestions before December 18th. If the court imposes a fine on the city, those dollars will come from the Judgment and Claims Fund, into which multiple departments—including SPD—pay each year.