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City of Seattle
NOTE: This news release has been retained for historical use ONLY! While the text was accurate at the date of the release, the contact information may be out of date.
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NEWS ADVISORY
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| SUBJECT: Independent consultant report on WTO planning
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
4/28/2000 |
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Alex Fryer (206) 684-8358
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Mayor Paul Schell releases
independent consultant report
on WTO planning
Note: This release was attached to the cover of the report.
Attached is the preliminary report by R.M. McCarthy and Associates and Robert Louden on
the Seattle Police Department’s planning and preparation for the World Trade
Organization (WTO) ministerial conference in Seattle last year.
Mayor Paul Schell hired the independent consultants about a month after the WTO
conference to provide an objective look at Police and Executive department planning for
the event and response during the conference week. This is the first part of their report,
dealing only with planning. A second and final report is due out early this summer.
The consultants are nationally-recognized experts in law enforcement specializing riot
and crowd control.
The following are Mayor Paul Schell’s comments on the report:
"What I’m sure first and foremost will come out of these reviews is this: The
City Council and I will develop legislation to ensure that every major event such as, for
example, the already dead proposal to bring an Asian Development Bank meeting here, will
get such a thorough City review that we will never be caught facing protests of the scale
Seattle experienced during the WTO ministerial conference.
This new process, which the Council and I will establish, will enable Seattle to reject
events with extreme political overtones that might lead to problems and unacceptable
costly local impacts while continuing the City’s role as a major convention
destination.
"Also, as was abundantly clear from the Seattle Police Department’s own
report and everyone’s observations of the week’s events, Seattle Police Officers
and officers from other jurisdictions – with but a few isolated exceptions – who
were called in to help, conducted themselves with courage and professionalism. We owe them
a huge debt of gratitude.
"The McCarthy-Louden report also shows us that the Seattle Police Department did
an excellent, candid job of analyzing their own planning for WTO and identifying its
weaknesses.
"This report reaches the same basic conclusions the Police Department’s own
after-action review did. It shows that the department failed to realize the magnitude of
the threat of civil disruption posed by the repeatedly published comments by protest
leaders and heavy Internet traffic recruiting participants.
"It shows that the department wasn’t ready with fully operational contingency
plans in case problems escalated toward a possible worst case, and the department
leadership’s reluctance to come forward with any doubts about the adequacy of funding
or of the number of officers available.
"The report underscores the department’s own conclusion that police planners
relied on the history of peaceful protest in Seattle and therefore did not look at a
possible worst case contingency plan.
"And the report raises the issue of what could have been done differently.
Implicitly, the report endorses the idea of a larger security zone with restricted entry,
as used most recently to control protests against the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C.
" In retrospect, I believe that before Seattleites saw the new and unprecedented
organizing power of opponents of our international trading and banking institutions –
they are lightning rods for a host of social justice and environmental issues –
closing off dozens of downtown blocks to thwart protest would have been an option
unacceptable to our citizens. In fact, early in their planning, the Police Department
discarded that option.
"Seattle’s planning did not include the idea of blocking off the streets for
blocks around the convention center, letting in only delegates as they did when they
closed off 90 city blocks in Washington, D.C. Up until WTO, since the early 1970s, no one
in the U.S. had seen political protest on the scale we experienced during that week. The
rules have changed; they changed here in Seattle.
"Clearly, most prominent among the lessons learned from this report and the
earlier Police Department After Action Report, is that planning must begin earlier and be
more thorough. We need to know more about the kinds of organizations we invite to Seattle
and what kinds of political demonstrations will follow them."
Note: The Mayor’s Office and the consultants agree that the preliminary report
speaks for itself. Neither Ron McCarthy nor Robert Louden will give interviews at this
time.
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