Seattle City Council Considers When Police Can Use Blast Balls, Rubber Bullets, Other 'Less Lethal Weapons'

The Seattle City Council's Public Safety Committee took a first pass on Dec. 10 at an ordinance that would dictate when the Seattle Police Department (SPD) could use "less lethal weapons" against protesters, a step required by the court overseeing the city's consent decree in the wake of the police response to 2020 protests.

"Less lethal weapons" (LLWs) include things like rubber bullets, pepper spray, blast balls, and tear gas, and while they are considered safer than firearms, they can still cause serious injury and death. SPD faced severe criticism over the use of these weapons during the 2020 protests, and City Attorney Ann Davison settled a lawsuit brought by 50 protesters over the police response to those protests for $10 million in January 2024.

Currently, the use of LLWs is governed by an interim policy created by SPD, but not by anything in the City's municipal code or any council ordinance, said Greg Doss, an analyst with Council Central Staff.

"There is a strong perception that the current ordinances are controlling SPD behavior," said Brian Maxey, chief operating officer for SPD. The police haven't needed to use LLWs in crowd dispersal much in the past four years, he said.

The interim policy outlines six phases of protest and how an incident commander — the law enforcement official in charge of the scene — should respond in each case. Those range from a "lawful assembly standoff" — small-scale protests, pickets, marches, and more — to "immediate life safety," where people are weaponizing cars or throwing Molotov cocktails. The policy stresses communication and de-escalation at each phase.

In 2020, the City Council attempted to pass an outright ban on LLWs, but the Department of Justice (DOJ) stepped in to stop it. A second attempt in 2021 didn't make it past the federal court monitor, who is part of the consent decree oversight process.

SPD has operated under the eye of the federal government since 2012 when a DOJ investigation revealed a pattern of excessive force and raised concerns about biased policing. In 2023, U.S. District Judge James Robart determined that the City and SPD had met most of the requirements of the consent decree, but the crowd management piece remained under his control.

Passing this ordinance — or a modified version — is required before the City can submit its proposed crowd management policy to the court, potentially paving the way to the end of the consent decree process.

The ordinance before the committee would repeal the unenforced 2021 law and require SPD to create and follow a crowd management policy "that is consistent with City values and expectations" outlined in the bill.

According to the Central Staff memo, those "values and expectations" include the people's right to assemble and the police role to "facilitate safe gatherings"; that LLWs cannot be used unless there is "imminent risk of physical injury … or significant property damage"; that an "Incident Commander or supervisor has to approve the use of LLWs for crowd dispersal"; and that an officer can only use LLWs for which they have been trained.

The ordinance does not contain specifics about crowd management policy by design, Doss said.

"The mayor's office has taken an approach that will allow SPD emerging changes in crowd control and best practices," he told councilmembers. According to the memo, if adopted as is, the City Council would not have the opportunity to approve changes to the crowd management policy moving forward, such as the use of new LLWs.

The courts as well as the trio of SPD oversight agencies — Office of Police Accountability, Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and Community Police Commission — would still review policy changes.

The City Council didn't weigh in on the acquisition of new crowd management technology prior to 2020, Doss said.

However, the police reaction to those protests sent the issues surrounding LLWs crashing into public consciousness. Thousands of people gathered in and around Westlake Park on May 30, 2020, to protest the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. According to the first of five Sentinel Event Review (SER) reports issued by OIG, the police response to predominantly peaceful protesters escalated the situation and made it worse.

According to the first SER, over the course of the first days of the protests, a young child was pepper sprayed, a police officer put a knee on an individual's neck during arrest, and an officer fought with a protester for a pink umbrella, among other incidents.

Other documented incidents included a 26-year-old protester who died three times after a blast ball struck near her feet, as reported by KUOW. SPD used tear gas to disperse crowds in the dense neighborhood of Capitol Hill. The weaponized gas infiltrated people's homes, impacting people completely uninvolved with the protests. Now, tear gas can only be used if authorized by the mayor.

During public comment at the Dec. 10 committee meeting, a person who identified themselves as an ER nurse said that they had volunteered as a medic during the protests and seen injuries that "haunt me to this day," including ocular damage from tear gas and ruptured ear drums from blast balls.

"If this ordinance passes, there won't be enough nurses to treat the Black, brown, queer, and marginalized people that SPD terrorizes with less lethal weapons," they said.

The issue of blast balls — explosive devices, some of which have pepper spray inside — dominated the conversation around individual LLWs. According to presenters, officers are supposed to throw blast balls away from individuals to avoid injury. The balls explode in two stages, which can create a 3-to-6-foot deviation in their trajectory.

Councilmember Cathy Moore said she found the idea of blast balls "profoundly disturbing" and suggested that their use require a high-level approval. Currently, the incident commander — the law enforcement official in charge of a given deployment — can authorize force, including blast balls, to move a crowd.

The use of blast balls falls into one of four policy considerations identified for the council by Central Staff. Others include the minimum rank of the incident commander — currently, a sergeant can authorize force, but best practices suggest that power fall to someone with the rank of lieutenant or above — as well as the threshold to declare a gathering an "unlawful assembly" and what role outside agencies such as the King County Sheriff's Office should play if they provide backup to SPD.

The Public Safety Committee will have an opportunity to amend the legislation, potentially making it more prescriptive and requiring council review of future changes to crowd management policy. A memo from Council Central Staff, which provides nonpartisan analysis on policy matters, suggests that the SPD is resistant to that kind of structure: "Executive staff have stated a strong preference against codified bans of LLWs or legislatively mandated use conditions because they believe they may prohibit the department from adopting new technologies."

As Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who is not a voting member of the committee, pointed out, "At one point, blast balls were new technology."

The Public Safety Committee will take up potential amendments to the legislation on Jan. 14 and walk-on amendments will not be welcome, said Committee Chair Bob Kettle.

A full-council vote is currently expected for Jan. 21.