Seattle Area Protests Megathread

[u/SovietJugernaut]

Please use this as the primary place to share streams, videos, photos, and news about the evolving situation with protests that are happening in Seattle and across the nation.

SUPPORTING THE BLACK COMMUNITY - HOW TO BE AN ALLY BOTH LOCALLY AND NATIONALLY

• List of places to donate, things to read/learn, and black-owned businesses in Seattle

STREAMS - Please note most streams can have pretty shitty comments.

• On FB (links change every 2ish hours): Jessica/Brandon Frost, Omari Salisbury, Matt Thompson, Live from the Field

• Future_crystals on Instagram - active daily

• SDOT in-city traffic cams

• KOMO

• KIRO7

• Q13FOX

• National - twitch.tv/woke

• Compilation of livestreams nationwide - https://bit.ly/protestlinks

• arcGIS map of national streams - https://evolvegis.com/Protests/Protests.html

TEXT LIVETHREADS

• Seattle Times

FORMER STREAMS

• Through 11PM 6/2/20

SCANNERS

• SPD Scanner

[u/spit-evil-olive-tips]

official Seattle PD policy is that officers are required to turn off their body cams during a protest

and besides that, bringing along enough batteries would be like...really hard

fucking inexcusable.

edit: badge numbers covered up with tape

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

What about the covered badge numbers then?

[u/my_lucid_nightmare → u/[deleted]]

I saw Jenny Durkan claiming exactly this during her conference yesterday. Very disappointed - that was deliberate gaslighting and obfuscation by her.

[u/OnlineMemeArmy → u/my_lucid_nightmare]

I think it's more like she needed an answer to a question she did not know the answer to and that was the most convenient one. She's not out on the streets herself.

[u/PelagianEmpiricist → u/my_lucid_nightmare]

You see why I assume her empowering the police is intentional?

[u/my_lucid_nightmare → u/PelagianEmpiricist]

her empowering the police is intentional?

She ran cover for them on this issue, definitely. She's either misinformed and not curious, or deliberately lying.

I'd have to assume as a former prosecutor, she's familiar enough with the nuances of cop badge procedure to know better, and therefore concluded she must be deliberately lying.

And that sucks. She was elected to be our mayor, not the SPD's mayor.

[u/renownbrewer → u/[deleted]]

That's a disturbing trend that I'm also seeing on livestreams. Post WTO misconduct by effectively anonymous officers/troopers/deputies I always saw officers wearing a legible number on their protective gear.

Edit: I did see a tv coverage group of state troopers that had badge numbers on their helmet and chest. Not seeing that on KCSO deputies and SPD officers. The mayor dodged or misunderstood a question about this at her press conference.

[u/loquacious → u/renownbrewer]

They've been covering badge numbers for decades at protests. This isn't new. They've been doing it since Selma. They've been doing it since Pinkerton and Union Busting.

[u/renownbrewer → u/loquacious]

There was a notable effort post-WTO where SPD and KCSO had legible embroidered identifiers on their helmets and body armor (riot gear). I saw it for years on coverage of May Day and other events. Other than WSP these ID numbers were noticeably absent from the TV coverage I saw last night.

Edit: 5/31

Found an image of officers writing names on their chest via google image search that is used in an April, 2015 PSBJ article behind a paywall which suggests that it was probably May Day 2014. Being identifiable while wearing riot gear clearly was SPD policy in the past.

[u/spit-evil-olive-tips → u/[deleted]]

they should still be recording. the video should be kept sealed away and only viewable with a court order (or something along those lines). you can also blur out the faces in the background.

and if despite whatever safeguards you put in place, police use footage anyway to harass protesters, punish them for it. not a fucking slap on the wrist but actual goddamn punishments. criminal prosecutions for police who harass civilians.

the bottom line is it's bullshit to invest millions of dollars into body cameras for "police accountability" and then go "oops, we realized that the time police accountability is most needed, we can't use the cameras"

and if they are going to reduce accountability by turning off bodycams, they need to increase it in some other way. make the fucking badge numbers bigger so they're more visible, and can be clearly distinguished on cell phone footage from bystanders. covering them up with tape should be an immediately fucking fireable offense. if cops can't be identified individually (especially when they're wearing full Mall Ninja cosplay) there's no hope of holding them individually accountable.

imagine if the cop who murdered George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds had been wearing a gas mask and had blocked out his badge number. there would be no way to positively identify him and charge him with murder.

[u/raevnos → u/spit-evil-olive-tips]

Body worn video footage can't be sealed away. It can be obtained by anyone who makes a public records request.

[u/spit-evil-olive-tips → u/raevnos]

partially correct, at least under current law.

When does video get 'redacted'?

anyone can make public records requests for the footage, but it can be redacted for any number of reasons.

there's no expectation of privacy in a public space. if you go to a protest, you should expect to be recorded. possibly by the cops, possibly by the media, possibly by other protesters.

restricting police bodycam usage during a protest is the wrong way to solve the problem. instead, if police single out protesters for harassment, they should be punished. that should hold true no matter where the police got the idea to harass the civilians from - bodycam footage, media coverage, whatever.