Federal court judge issues temporary restraining order against the SPD
Recently, a lawsuit was filed by Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County, the ACLU, and a number of individuals, against the City of Seattle, decrying the City’s tactics against protesters — specifically the use of less-lethal weapons like tear gas, pepper spray, flash-bangs, and kinetic projectiles, in a manner that was both excessive and which had a chilling effect on the protester’s protected speech.
Today, the Plaintiffs received the first of what will hopefully be many victories in this case — an order granting (in part) Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order:
ORDER granting in part Plaintiffs' [6] Motion for Temporary Restraining Order. The Court temporarily ENJOINS The City of Seattle, including the Seattle Police Department and any other officers, departments, agencies, or organizations under the Seattle Police Department's control (collectively, the City), is hereby enjoined from employing chemical irritants or projectiles of any kind against persons peacefully engaging in protests or demonstrations. This injunction includes: (1) any chemical irritant such as and including CS Gas (tear gas) and OC spray (pepper spray) and (2) any projectile such as and including flash-bang grenades, pepper balls, blast balls, rubber bullets, and foam-tip projectiles. This Order does not preclude individual officers from taking necessary, reasonable, proportional, and targeted action to protect against a specific imminent threat of physical harm to themselves or identifiable others or to respond to specific acts of violence or destruction of property. Further, tear gas may be used only if (a) efforts to subdue a threat by using alternative crowd measures, including pepper spray, as permitted by this paragraph, have been exhausted and ineffective and (b) SPD's Chief of Police has determined that use of tear gas is the only reasonable alternative available. The Chief of Police may only authorize limited and targeted use of tear gas and must direct it to those causing violent or potentially life-threatening activity. To the extent that chemical irritants or projectiles are used in accordance with this paragraph, they shall not be deployed indiscriminately into a crowd and to the extent reasonably possible, they should be targeted at the specific imminent threat of physical harm to themselves or identifiable others or to respond to specific acts of violence or destruction of property. (2) In the event that Plaintiffs seek relief for an alleged violation of this Order, the City must respond to the motion for relief within 24 hours.(3) Because this is a non-commercial case, the balance of hardships favors Plaintiffs, and there is no realistic likelihood of harm to the City of Seattle from enjoining its conduct, the Court waives the security bond requirement.(4) This Order will expire fourteen days after entry unless extended by the Court for good cause. Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(b)(2). Signed by Judge Richard A. Jones.(PM)
Photo by Cooper Baumgartner on Unsplash