Downtown residents raise concerns over Olympia Police Department’s use of tear gas
Some downtown Olympia residents were hit with tear gas in their homes July 24 when Olympia police tried to control and disperse a crowd officers say got violent.
Police say the decision to use tear gas is made thoughtfully, but the experience has left neighbors asking fundamental questions about police tactics.
A protest the night of July 24 was deemed a “riot” by Olympia police and ended in multiple arrests. The group of roughly 100 people had been marching and calling out chants focused on the presence of federal agents in Portland, when some from the group broke windows at the Helen Sommers Building at the Capitol Campus, home to Washington State Patrol’s headquarters. Initial estimates show it will cost a minimum of $50,000 for repairs to the Sommers building, according to Department of Enterprise Services spokesperson Linda Kent.
Officers gave the group orders to disperse, Lt. Paul Lower said, and continued to give such orders “throughout the remainder of the affair.”
Police say the group was throwing projectiles at officers, and that police used several types of crowd-control munitions to attempt to move or break up the group, including smoke canisters; flash bangs; stinger balls, which make loud noises while emitting rubber pellets; and pepper balls, which are small plastic pellets with pepper spray powder in them that officers shoot out of air rifles.
The Olympia Police Department has now confirmed that they also used CS gas, or tear gas.
However, downtown residents had already assumed as much, after opening their doors or windows that night to face clouds of air that irritated their lungs and sinuses.
What downtown residents felt
One area where tear gas and other munitions were deployed was near Eighth Avenue Southeast and Jefferson Street Southeast, Lt. Paul Lower confirmed, close to the Olympia post office.
He said that was an area where people in the group, deemed a “mob” by police, threw projectiles at officers, shot fireworks, and aimed lasers into officers’ eyes. At some point, an arrest was attempted and the group tried to prevent the arrest, he said.
Dana and Brandon Marvin live on the 800 block of Jefferson Avenue, in a home where they also run a pet-grooming business they stopped operating in February because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Security footage the Marvins posted on YouTube shows a mostly black-clad group drumming and marching past their house just after 10 p.m., before a loud boom emanates from off-camera.
That’s followed by several more loud booms and quieter crackles as what looks like smoke billows down the street. At least one protester is heard taunting police and, at one point, a warning from police is heard. Brandon Marvin goes out to the porch, and is seen coughing as Dana says “That’s pepper spray...”
The video shows some law enforcement vehicles lingering for the next few minutes — the whole video is just under 7 minutes long.
Brandon Marvin said he heard the march coming down the street while he was on the computer talking to friends who live out-of-state. He walked to the window, saw some of the clash, and went to the porch to try to catch what was happening on camera.
Dana Marvin had been fast asleep upstairs when it started, she said. A boom woke her up, and she could see a flash through her drawn curtains. She ran downstairs to where Brandon was filming, and smoke was coming into the house, irritating her nose and stinging her throat, she said.
Their 2-year-old’s window faces Jefferson, the Marvins say, and Brandon called it “deeply concerning” that a munition might ricochet into the child’s window. Dana deals with PTSD, Brandon said, which amplifies the issue.
But their concern expands beyond their family unit. As Brandon put it, if the Marvins felt the impact at a psychological level, what does it feel like to people closer to the munitions, who feel it at a psychological and physical level?
“If the protesters would’ve just gone through here at night, even if they vandalized something, it would’ve probably been better than what it was,” Brandon Marvin said. “I don’t think the police were justified. It was not worth the risk of endangering our daughter who was right at that window, in order to presumably protect property that we didn’t see any damage to.”
Dana Marvin said their goal is not to diminish the message of protesters. They want to see an end to police brutality, and they believe they witnessed police brutality in front of their house.
”I’m not concerned over protesters at all — I have no fear of the people in my community,” Dana Marvin said. “I am scared of the tactics that police used to control the people in my area. I am scared of that. And I would like not to be scared of that.”
About a block from the intersection was Natalie Lawrence, who lives in a studio near the Olympia Timberland Library. She said she heard loud bangs that night, then another round of loud noises about an hour later. She thought it was strange, maybe fireworks, because she wasn’t hearing any sirens or protesting.
Then, she said, she heard someone run near her apartment and say “Is it safe here?”
“So, I stepped outside,” Lawrence said in a phone interview with The Olympian. “And I was instantly hit in the face with tear gas.”
She said she felt like she couldn’t get any air and tears were instantly rolling down her face. She ran back inside and closed her windows, she said, then called her partner who was on his way there. He was crying in his car, too, she said.
Her concerns were several, one being how it may cause complications for “people with uteruses,” referencing reports that people exposed to the gas have experienced troubling changes to their menstrual cycles. Or she wonders about someone with COVID-19 driving to the hospital and experiencing what her boyfriend experienced.
“It just really chokes you, and I’m surprised since I live about a block or two away,” Lawrence said. “I can only imagine what the people experienced who had been tear gassed directly...”
Jenny Milchenko, who lives in an apartment nearby, described a similar experience. After she heard chanting draw closer, she started hearing and seeing booms — it was tough to tell exactly who was doing what, she said.
Protesters pushed further along Jefferson, near Seventh Avenue, she said, and it seemed as if things were calming down. Then she saw people running, heard bangs, and saw a lot of protesters run close to their apartment window trying to get away.
She felt the tear gas seep into her apartment through their open windows. Her face burned, she couldn’t open her eyes, and she was crying, she said — like someone put hot sauce on raw skin. The burning only lasted for about 5 minutes, she said, but she could tell her lungs felt heavier afterward.
A neighbor with asthma was having a hard time breathing and asked her if she had an inhaler, she said, and she got concerned about her elderly pet cat.
Whether provoked or unprovoked, Milchenko said it felt “irresponsible,” especially given the COVID-19 pandemic. Milchenko has a master’s degree in public health, and has been working with the homeless community for two years. She wasn’t concerned about herself, she said, but felt a sense of injustice — she questioned whether police consider who might be impacted by this.
“If we’re looking at what we value, do we value punishing protesters over protecting the community?” she asked. “And at what cost?”
Police considerations
Police Lt. Lower said the decisions to deploy munitions do take into account officers’ surroundings.
Officers evaluate often the “severity of the assault” they’re taking and crimes that are occurring to assess what tool can address the behavior and what that “could mean for the surrounding environment,” he said.
The officers’ actions were in response to actions taken by the group, he said.
“This is the mob that’s causing our response,” Lower said. “It’s not like police officers decided we’re going to do something at that location.”
Lower acknowledged that people are suspicious of law enforcement, and encouraged anyone who’s curious to ask for copies of police reports from that evening.
Supervisory reports that will include the number of munitions deployed, when and where, are still in progress and typically take 2-3 weeks to complete after an incident, Lower said.
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