Readers may recall the arrests at Seattle's Municipal Building on March 13, 1996, shortly after the city planted briar bushes to discourage a homeless encampment upon the literal doorsteps of the city hall. What follows is a first-person account, including allegations of SPD misconduct, written by one of the plaintiffs and participants in the demonstration, John Hoffman. (Hoffman is also the author of The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving and an unpublished novel, Love Children of the Cartoon Cult.)
On September 12, 1997, John Hoffman and Sinan Demirel filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Seattle Police Department (SPD). They allege that the SPD falsely arrested them.
It was an ironic and yet completely appropriate place for a showdown between the city of Seattle and the homeless advocates.
The homeless advocates were, after all, literally in front of city hall. The first few cold January nights at "Camp Muni" everybody expected the cops to swoop down and arrest people as they had promised. After all, the Rice administration squandered $15,000 on a Haz-Mat team because some homeless person had allegedly poo-pooed in the scraggly brush in front of the Muni Building.
It was kind of like a slumber party, only after the end of Western civilization. When nobody was arrested the first few nights, some developed the "Monday theory," figuring arrests would come after the weekend, when the suits came back to work. In fact it lasted all the way from January until mid-March.
An overhanging eave provided shelter form the rain. Here it was that, supposedly, homeless people would openly copulate, shoot heroin into their arms and take a dump right next to police headquarters. As if!
Proximity to the powers-that-be was ironically one of the main reasons homeless people favored this particular spot. Besides being dry, it was reasonably safe.
On March 13 the city government squandered another $4,000 to rip out the comfy cement ledge and plant the botanical equivalent of concertina wire, thorn bushes where homeless people had before been sleeping.
Two hours before the next full-scale demonstration was to take place, some guy called me and hinted there might be a "direct action," which is a code word that we radical types use to imply that something might really and truly happen instead of the usual blah, blah, blah. So I phoned "Video Guy" Mike Crow, the same guy who captured the Broadway Police Riot of September 1994 in living color-black and blue, mostly.
We all met in front of the Muni Building and waited for something to happen. Members of the media waited as well.
The security guard expressed regret-on video no less-that the "direct action" couldn't wait until midnight when he could entirely avoid getting involved.
When it was dark, Scott Morrow made a speech, leaning upon a shovel. Morrow stated the thorn bushes had to be removed, so that homeless people who had slept in this location night after night could continue to have a safe place. The bushes would not be destroyed, Morrow assured everyone, but carefully preserved. Morrow added that everybody should be polite to any city officials that showed up.
I stayed upon the sidewalk and never dirtied my hands. The media went crazy, of course, eager for images as the "gardening efforts" began. I was worried some of them would trample the plants and then Scott would get blamed.
A Bizarre and Illogical Request
Eventually, the police showed up. I saw one of the cops pull on a pair of gloves and realized that somebody was going to get arrested. Remembering my promise to my wife that I would not get arrested-like I did that time I sat in front of the bulldozer at the Jungle-I decided to leave at that very moment, first stopping to call my wife from a pay phone across the street.
"Cross on the green, not in between," I told myself.
And suddenly a cop was upon me, telling me to go back and join the protest or I would be arrested.
This was weird. A police officer was ordering me to join a protest.
I mean, what if I didn't want to protest any more? What if I were suddenly happy with everything?
The officer told me again to join the crowd gathered across the street or face arrest. In five seconds.
I blinked at him rapidly, transmitting in a nonverbal manner that this was a bizarre and illogical request. After all, the people in that crowd were, I figured, going to get arrested. So this cop was basically telling me to do something that would cause me to get arrested, or he would arrest me.
Maybe, I might have reflected, I could just go and handle the gardening tools a little bit, or grub around in the dirt some and mess up my nice clean hands? Anything to make the officer happy.
"What's wrong, John?" he asked me with a grin.
I didn't have time to reflect upon his astonishing lack of propriety, referring to me by my first name when we had never been formally introduced. In fact, I had never met this guy before in my life.
Maybe he had some other way of knowing. But if I were to start writing about the infiltrators within activist organizations, and secret midnight briefings by police intelligence units, well, this would start reading like an account of politics in some banana republic dictatorship.
And we all know things like that don't happen here.
The bike cop threw the cuffs on me and apparently seized my address book as "evidence." I never saw it again, except when I looked at Mike's video later and saw that one of the police officers had it. The address book was never presented as evidence along with the shovel, hoe and flowerpots the authorities were prepared to introduce as evidence of a homeless conspiracy to overthrow our lawful government through force and violence.
One of the cops came up behind me and tightened up the cuffs by grasping the chain in the middle and nearly lifting me off my feet, and Mike captured the whole thing on video. While the police were shoving me into the paddy wagon, my head got slammed and I fell back, landing upon the pavement, and once again it was captured, more or less, on Mike's video.
One paper said ten of us were arrested, the other said eleven. The paddy wagon was actually so full that two of the arrestees had to walk.
Not the Top Story
Three calendar days I spent in the can. It was nine hours before I obtained drugs for my aching head. When the nurse finally came to see me, I gave him a piece of my mind.
"You're the medical person here," I declared, "and that makes you responsible for people's health in this pit. You know, I was an army medic once upon a time, and in my opinion, I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Everything in those holding cells is covered with filth, looks like it hasn't been cleaned in months. A person could get TB in this shithole. You may not answer to anybody here, but you will answer to God, that's for damn sure..."
Looking stung, he told me that if I wanted to get something for my headache I should adopt a better attitude.
He eventually gave me a whole box of Advil, about twenty pills, I guess so he wouldn't have to see me in a while.
While at the King County jail, we saw our demonstration whiz past the television one time, but then some American soldier kid got himself shot in Bosnia, and since he was from Tacoma or someplace local, it knocked all the other news stories aside.
As one unexpected and unpredictable side-effect of a single round fired-not even fatally-near an ammo dump in Bosnia, news coverage of a homeless protest in Seattle gets knocked out of Top Story status.
Before being moved from the precinct, I had one last encounter with the bike cop, who wanted some information but wasn't, of course, going to get it.
Holding up my fingernails, I inquired sweetly, " Do I appear to have been doing yard work tonight, officer?"
Eventually I got sprung and the authorities were nice enough to release me minutes after the last bus was running, so I could get some nice fresh air. I was charged with aggravated property damage, a crime which could bring a $1,000 fine and/or a year in jail. The city offered me a $75 fine and 15 hours of community service if I would only plead out instead of asking for a jury trial.
So a jury trial it was!
Months and months we spent waiting for our day in court. Every thirty days or so we would have to show up at the Public Safety Building just to sign away our right to a speedy trial.
And then the big day was upon us, and the city's case fell apart right in front of our eyes. Charges against three of us were dismissed for lack of witnesses, and the remaining individuals who went before a jury-Scott Morrow and Sinan Demirel-probably had to keep from snickering as one officer couldn't even properly locate City Hall upon her own map. Another witness for the prosecution-some kind of professional bush keeper-proceeded to open up her mouth and destroy the whole case against Scott and Sinan.
Suing City Hall
After successfully defending ourselves in court, now we took the offense. We decided to sue the city of Seattle. But in Washington state, you can't just file a lawsuit against a city.
Legally, you have to file a claim first and then give the city sixty days to attempt a settlement. In practice, it can actually take longer. But once that fails, then you can sue. In the case of a violation of your civil liberties, perhaps you might get a better shake in federal court.
Also in Washington state you can't just file a lawsuit against an individual. This is a communal property state, and so in theory you are also taking that person's husband or wife to court, and all of the possible spouses are named in the lawsuit, Jane Doe fashion.
Personally, I hope and pray for a media circus in which the burning issues that brought me to a demonstration in March of 1996 are hashed over once again in a very public way, with all of my friends and associates present to watch the officers who arrested us respond to relentless questioning, their grins replaced with some other expression.
False arrests and malicious prosecution happen frequently. I know that I've already referred one other guy to my attorney, and I'm confident he won't be the last. But there should be a lot more lawsuits of this type. Plenty of folks don't realize that a lawyer will frequently give a "free initial consult" to see if you have a decent case.
Also, some lawyers sue upon a contingency bases-meaning they are only paid from a portion of the proceeds of a successful lawsuit.
And the city is prepared to pay.
In a document dated April 8, 1997 from the office of city attorney Mark Sidran to the office of the state auditor, I learned that the city had available, for 1997, $6.9 million dollars for "nonreimbursable judgements and claims, including police actions." This is almost the same amount paid out every year to provide services for the homeless.
So in my opinion activists should be filing lawsuits. We should sue and sue and sue when we are wronged, not suck it up like good little citizen martyrs-accepting, for example, an "apology" from police chief Norm Stamper-and then maybe, just maybe, some money will "trickle down" with which we can create our own social programs, our own low income housing levy, our own food bank funding.
Thus the energy of the oppressor is reversed. Each well-documented act of brutality, every false arrest and malicious prosecution-yes, even death itself, bestowed in a random and chaotic fashion-each of these things becomes in effect a gift, a chance for change, an opportunity.
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The City Responds Lori Mayfield, assistant to city attorney Mark Sidran, said that cases which involve police officers are contracted out to private law firm Stafford, Frey, and Cooper, which "generally speaking" does not issue statements to the press on pending litigation. However, Mayfield was later able to produce what she said was a joint statement with the law firm. In response to the allegations by arrestees John Hoffman and Sinan Demirel, Mayfield said, "We feel the police had probable cause to arrest them, and the case is proceeding." She said that the law firm is defending both the city and the individual police officers in the suit. |
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