Court says Seattle Police Department in contempt for use of pepper spray on BLM protesters

A US court has found the Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) use of pepper spray against Black Lives Matter demonstrators this summer in contempt of a court order that banned such projectiles.

Richard Jones, a US District Court judge for Washington’s Western District, wrote on Monday that Seattle police made four “clear violations” of a preliminary injunction designed to stop the SPD using force against peaceful protesters.  

The 27-page document was in response to a motion filed by Black Lives Matter of Seattle-King County, who alleged the abuses of the injunction against the city’s police department.

The judge said Seattle police used pepper spray, pepper balls, paintballs and blast balls - which release pepper gas when they explode - against protesters on four occasions and that “they were plain violations of the command that less lethal weapons should not be deployed indiscriminately into a crowd”.  

Mr Jones rejected the police department’s argument that it was in “substantial compliance” with the injunction issued several months ago, the Seattle Times reported, and that it was not responsible for the actions of individual officers.

While there were times the SPD did comply with the order, it was “misguided” to believe four violations of the injunction would not be in contempt, Mr Jones wrote.

He added that the court could not decide whether every single deployment of force was a violation of the injunction, which was issued amid protests at the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minneapolis police custody in May.

“The appropriate comparison must be between the times the City was compliant and the times it was not compliant,” he wrote. “Put that way, the four clear violations are significant and must be given their due weight”.

When the injunction was issued against the SPD and the City of Seattle in June, Mr Jones found evidence that excessive force was used against protesters and warned that such weapons and projectiles amounted to a violation of free-speech rights, the Seattle Times reported.

He asked lawyers for Black Lives Matter on Monday to submit a motion for proposed sanctions against the SPD by the end of next week.

“Seattle Police’s continued use of less lethal weapons against protesters is disturbing and the City needs to focus on protecting freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, rather than using force to prevent protesters from exercising their constitutionally-protected rights,” Lisa Nowlin, one of the lawyers for Black Lives Matter, said in a statement to the Seattle Times.  

Another lawyer, David Perez, said Seattle’s police made “repeated and blatant violations of protesters’ constitutional rights” and that the court ruling on Monday “serves as a reminder that the City cannot violate the Court’s orders without consequences.”

In a statement, Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County added that “the use of pepper spray and blast balls against our community is proof that our protests are necessary.”

Detective Patrick Michaud, a spokesman for the SPD, said to the Seattle Times that the department would not comment on the ruling while legal action was ongoing.