News

19 Feb SPJ Western Washington condemns the Seattle City Council’s reauthorization of “less lethal” weapons 

CONTACT: Alex Bruell, SPJ Western Washington President, spjwash@gmail.com 

SEATTLE – The Society of Professional Journalists Western Washington Pro Chapter condemns the Seattle City Council’s decision permitting the Seattle Police Department to use less lethal weapons, which further endangers working journalists on the ground.

As passed by the council, Council Bill 120916 once again allows the department to use blast balls, pepper spray, and other so-called “less lethal” weapons by the order of the Seattle Police Chief. While the ordinance limits their use to cases involving “imminent risk of physical injury to any person or significant property damage,” it gives the SPD unwarranted discretion to define such cases.

This law poses a threat to the health and well-being of reporters documenting protests, riots, and other instances in which the department is likely to use such weapons. It fails to codify strict standards, definitions, or place sufficient checks on a police force which has repeatedly failed to respect the constitutional rights of the press. 

In the summer of 2020, thousands in Seattle joined the world marching for racial justice. SPD police officers assaulted and injured protesters, bystanders, and journalists without provocation. One SPD officer put a knee to a person’s neck. A woman was resuscitated three times after being hit in the chest with a blast ball from the SPD.

In December of 2020, U.S. Federal Judge Richard Jones ruled that the SPD incurred “clear violations” concerning officers’ use of pepper spray and blast balls, citing one case in which an  officer “demonstrate[d] a clear lack of care for whether the blast ball landed.” 

This case is all too familiar to our board members. Blast balls emit blinding flashes, deafening noise, and sometimes chemical irritants–often causing serious injury to bystanders like SPJ-Washington board member Renee Raketty, who forever lost much of her hearing to a blast ball deployed by the SPD while reporting on 2020’s historic protests. Raketty was recording events away from both officers and protestors, video of the interaction showed, and posed no threat to people or property.

The SPD offered no answers for these incidents as they were reported by Seattle newsrooms and later the Office of the Seattle Inspector General. Its grievous response to 2020’s racial justice protests cost the City of Seattle some $10 million per a class action lawsuit brought by 50 protesters and journalists in 2024. No amount of money can undo the physical and emotional trauma the SPD’s actions have caused.

The public relies on trusted eyes and ears on the ground to get the facts. Reporting on demonstrations is critical to our jobs. A free press is among the institutions protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids, “…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” 

The City of Seattle’s less lethal weapons ordinance gives the SPD carte blanche to use undue force against journalists without consequence. The Seattle City Council must hold the SPD to higher standards if the free press is to do its duty of recording history.

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