After the Mayday USA rally in Cal Anderson Park last spring, Seattle’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) attempted to piece together a comprehensive story of why things went so wrong. The OIG assembled a panel of LGBTQIA+ community members and Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers to investigate and come to a definitive conclusion on how relations had devolved so badly between the groups. By the third day of discussions, however, one of the panelists had leaked information to Divest SPD about the private meetings, which ultimately led the OIG to cancel further discussions.
Despite this abrupt ending, the OIG was still able to gather a significant amount of information on the SPD’s management of the event. Now those findings have been finally released publicly in a report entitled “Sentinel Event Review of the Police Response to the Mayday USA Rally in Cal Anderson.”
Parks and Rec and right-wing rallies
While some officers from other precincts were reportedly unaware of the “cultural context” they entered, the SPD as a whole seemed to have been fully aware of Mayday USA’s intent to target Seattle’s LGBTQIA+ community and historic neighborhood. The OIG report reveals that, in a last-ditch effort, the SPD called Mayday organizers and asked them to move the rally out of Cal Anderson and into Westlake Park downtown, but the organizers refused.
When discussing the days, weeks, and even months before the rally, panelists agreed that Seattle Parks and Recreation failed to properly vet Mayday USA before offering it Cal Anderson as a venue. Panelists from the SPD, specifically, expressed frustration over how Parks and Rec didn’t notify their intelligence team or the City Attorney’s office once it approved Mayday’s permit.
There was also disappointment among the panelists regarding the parks department’s lack of awareness and inability to communicate. When Christian supremacist Sean Feucht requested to hold another rally in Cal Anderson Park, the OIG actually stepped in to assist Parks and Rec, negotiating a deal with Feucht to hold his event in Gas Works Park instead.
“Transtifa” and POETs
Once police finally caught wind of the rally and its potential for conflict on May 14, they only had 10 days to prepare. At that day’s intelligence briefing, the SPD decided it would deploy POETs (officers who conduct outreach before and during crowd-heavy events to keep the peace, ideally forming relationships with both sides of a protest), CRGs (who manage and/or arrest demonstrators), and SATs (plain-clothes officers who watch crowds and provide information).
One of the report’s biggest conclusions is that the POETs failed horribly at ensuring peaceful relations between police and Queer protesters, due to both the SPD’s lack of concrete support and its officers’ own poor behavior. According to the panelists, they “identified differences in POET officers’ communication with counterdemonstrators, rally security liaisons, and rally attendees. POET officers frequently spoke with the Mayday USA security liaison, sharing Mayday USA intelligence with SPD leadership on-scene. After hearing the Mayday USA security liaison refer to counterdemonstrators as “transtifa,” POET officers adopted the term, which spread to other SPD personnel.”
The report also found that, once the rally began, the POETs were grossly understaffed and underprepared. They were told to make a barricade with their bicycles, yet had no information on where it should be placed. And their communication with the LGBTQIA+ community before the event — something that would understandably be expected of a POET — was described by one panelist as “nonexistent.”
When the POETs were eventually asked to explain the barricade’s location, and if the restrooms behind the rally stage were available, they had no answers. Instead, according to witnesses, the POETs were dismissive and easily angered. They often minimized the concerns of counterprotesters, and when their authority was challenged, they grew frustrated and lashed out.
Balloon incident
According to the OIG report, a couple of balloons are what ultimately provoked police to arrest 23 people. Sixteen others were also reportedly injured by the use of force. Yet the report finds that those balloons were never actually popped. Instead, counterprotesters removed three balloons from one of Mayday USA’s fences, then an “individual released the [balloons] into the air, and the CRG commander immediately ordered their arrest for property destruction.”
This is what led CRG bicycle officers to begin to pursue the suspect into the counterdemonstration zone. Two other suspects were also pursued by CRGs, who knocked people over in the chaotic process. The report found that “the three CRG units converged in an uncoordinated manner on the counterdemonstration zone, knocking people to the ground, yelling commands, and ultimately arresting 11 counterdemonstrators.”
Those moments are what produced the harrowing body cam footage of an officer who said, “We’re past talking to people, we’re here to fuck people up now,” as well as the images on social media and news outlets across Seattle of counterprotesters who were shoved, beaten, and pepper-sprayed.
“Antifa” vs. police
OIG panelists reportedly held vastly different understandings of the word “antifa.” For the community panelists, it was nuanced term, representing a variety of political positions united by a shared resistance against oppressive, authoritarian systems or “fascism.” On the other hand, one SPD officer explained that it simply meant “anyone that’s going to throw a rock at them.”
Antifa is a political philosophy shared across movements, and is not an actual organization.
SPD panelists said the department has used the term “antifa” internally for decades, since the 1999 “Battle of Seattle” WTO protests, and its use has become less nuanced and more negative with time.
The lack of nuance in labeling the groups involved at the rally also extended to Mayday USA, which the police simply called a “church group,” despite having knowledge that it claimed to be “saving the children” from the LGBTQIA+ community.
The report also stated that “SPD panelists described the [Police] Department’s concern that the 'antifa’ and 'pro trans’ groups would attract 'bad actors,’ which became a key factor in SPD planning.”
Recommendations
The OIG report ends by giving the SPD a set of 24 recommendations on how it can improve its situation awareness, tactics, communications, and community legitimacy, including how to better engage with the LGBTQIA+ community.
Several recommendations advise that officers have more regular training on cultural history and social differences, and when planning protest coverage, include the location’s cultural context. Other recommendations encourage the SPD to form more consistent and friendlier community relations, such as wearing civilian clothing instead of being armed and in uniform during community outreach events, as well as making the LGBTQ+ liaison position full-time.
The intention of building these stronger relations, according to the report, would ultimately be for the SPD to consult community organizations and members more regularly around sensitive situations like Mayday, so that they may be able to understand the context better and receive guidance on how not to needlessly antagonize people who simply want the right to exist peacefully in their own neighborhood.
The OIG report can be found at https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/OIG/Sentinel%20Event%20Review/SER%20of%20May%2024th%20Cal%20Anderson%20Event.pdf.
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