(The Center Square) – The Spokane Police Department arrested 11 people during Saturday’s “No Kings Day” protest after another intense, and at times aggressive, demonstration last Wednesday.
SPD posted a timeline on Monday of “what began as a peaceful protest” in the Riverfront Park but later devolved into civil unrest. Saturday’s protest followed another last Wednesday, during which SPD and other agencies arrested more than 30 people, some for unlawful imprisonment.
Much of the ordeal centered around President Donald Trump’s mass deportations, as advocates say federal authorities are targeting law-abiding immigrants. Protests took place nationwide on Saturday, coinciding with Spokane’s Pride parade, attracting thousands of spectators.
“The Spokane Police Department fully supports the right to peaceful protest and remains committed to protecting that right while ensuring the safety of everyone in our community,” Police Chief Kevin Hall wrote in a statement. “While the vast majority of participants were cooperative, we had to act when safety, including that of the demonstrators, was at risk.”
According to the timeline, thousands of people began marching through downtown at around 5 p.m. A tactical team maintained dialogue with the group the entire day to prevent unrest, but as time passed, the crowd broke through the boundaries of the permitted area into live traffic.
The group had shrunk considerably by 8 p.m., but some demonstrators still weren’t complying.
“At 8:44 p.m., dispersal orders were issued in response to continued roadway obstruction,” according to SPD’s timeline. “Direct challenges and increasingly aggressive behavior towards the officers changed the tenor and tone of what had been a productive dialogue.”
Shortly after, SPD started arresting people for failure to disperse, similar to last Wednesday. Officers deployed inert smoke and pepper balls “at the feet of those resistant to leaving the roadway.” Of the 11 arrested, one faced an additional charge for malicious mischief after spray painting city property.
SPD corrected rumors alleging that protesters were breaking a curfew on Saturday after Mayor Lisa Brown declared an emergency and set one last Wednesday. That curfew expired the next morning and was not in effect on Saturday. SPD also says it did not order the mall to evacuate.
Hall said SPD would review its response on Saturday, as the Office of the Police Ombuds also looks over the use of force from Wednesday. He held a press conference that Wednesday night and denied that officers shot people with rubber bullets, but he didn’t know about the bean bags.
“As part of our ongoing after-action review, I have learned that some [SPD] officers did deploy foam projectiles and bean bags. I want to be clear – these are classified as less-lethal tools and are not rubber bullets,” Hall wrote in a statement on Friday. “These tools were used in response to assaultive behavior. We are still reviewing the full context of these interactions, and unless new details come to light, the actions taken appear to align with our use-of-force guidelines.”
Hall said he didn’t have that information during the press conference and regrets not providing a complete picture. He and Brown asked OPO to review “all relevant sections of [SPD’s] policy, any apparent or actual departures from policy, as well as command operations and decisions.”
“The people of Spokane have placed their trust in the OPO’s ability to be an independent voice of analysis and reason. Chief Hall and I share that trust and believe an independent review is a commonsense step to take during this important moment,” Brown wrote in a press release.
