Journalist Jailed As Seattle Cops Cleared CHOP Shares His Story

SEATTLE, WA — A reporter detained in Seattle last week, as police officers took control of the former Capitol Hill Organized Protest area, shared a first-hand account of his experience Thursday.

Andrew Buncombe, a British journalist, moved to Seattle from New York City in 2018 and serves as The Independent's Chief U.S. Correspondent. After three decades covering stories across the globe, including assignments in Cuba and Pakistan, he says this month's arrest was a career first.

In an interview Thursday, Buncombe told Patch he was sent to Minneapolis to cover the aftermath of George Floyd's killing. When he returned to Seattle, local demonstrations were well underway, and a few days later the CHOP was born.

Early in the morning on July 1, more than one hundred police officers moved in on the protest zone, forcefully clearing the remaining demonstrators and arresting dozens amid mounting public pressure following recent shootings in the area.

Buncombe said he awoke to news of the police action on Twitter and headed to the scene, looking to hear from protesters and the police chief. He arrived on the northeast corner of Cal Anderson Park around 9 a.m., after the first wave of arrests, and found himself in handcuffs within minutes.

The Independent published a detailed account of Buncombe's experience Thursday morning:

"Five minutes after having arrived the park, dispatched by my editors to cover the police operation and speak to protesters, I was arrested at its northern edge by an officer standing on a slight rise and behind black and yellow tape that read 'Police line – Do not cross.' I was the other side of that tape. I did not cross it. At no point did I try to cross the police line.

The officer told me the park was out of bounds, and I needed to step back. I held up my State Department-issued press badge and told him I wanted to get some photographs of what was happening.

The officer again told me to retreat and said he was going to arrest me if I did not. I again told him I was a member of the media and intended to stay and do my work. He then grabbed me and marched me towards several of his colleagues, who pinned my hands behind my back."

Buncombe was booked for "failure to disperse," a misdemeanor violation in Seattle's municipal code that explicitly exempts members of the media. During transport from the West Precinct to the King County Jail, he recalls being bound by chains and struggling to breathe.

Buncombe continues in The Independent:

"After an hour in a holding cell, the handcuffs still on, somebody again put leg irons around my ankles, and connected the two with a piece of chain pulled tight around my stomach. Were we heading to Guantanamo Bay? A woman also under arrest kept saying she did not speak English and requested a Navajo translator. 'I think you speak English just fine,' mocked one officer.

In the van, the woman insisted on lying lengthways in the compartment she was in. I was squeezed into a tiny, claustrophobic section, perched on a narrow bench, trying not to slip off as the van sped through the city’s boarded-up downtown, towards the jail. By this point, the so-called 'belly chain' had become so tight I could not fully exhale. It felt obscene and preposterous to have to inform the officers I could not properly breathe, that phrase having become weighted with such power and resonance during the Black Lives Matter movement, echoing the gut-wrenching final words of George Floyd. But that was the situation. I could not properly breathe.

One of the officers responded: 'If you can speak, you can breathe.'

When he arrived at the jail, Buncombe joined dozens of protesters who were picked up throughout the morning.

"The closing of the CHOP and the retaking of the East Precinct had been talked about for some weeks, and there was a lot of pressure on the mayor," he said. "One would have to assume there had been a lot of planning behind this operation. But, when I got to the jail, it kind of felt like either they didn't have the facilities to deal with it, or there hadn't been a plan."

The crowding was a point of particular concern amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

"One of the things that really struck me, sort of the deep irony I guess, on the glass of all the cells there were these stickers from the CDC saying you've got to do your best to avoid getting COVID-19...regularly hand wash, wear masks and enact social distancing," Buncombe said. "It was impossible to do so in a cell 20-feet long and, by the end of the afternoon, 10 guys in it."

About nine hours after the ordeal started, he was released on personal recognizance after signing an agreement to appear in court. Since then, details on the status of his case or a potential court date have not materialized.

Following the arrests on July 1, Mayor Jenny Durkan recommended charges not be filed against protesters for misdemeanors like obstruction, failure to disperse or trespassing. In June, Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes said he would review misdemeanor cases involving peaceful protesters and could move to dismiss many of them.

Despite the assurances, many of those arrested in recent weeks have failed to get concrete answers on the future of their charges — an area of uncertainty Buncombe now shares.

"I don't want this on my record," he said. "I don't want it in the system somehow, sort of tucked away."

Having experienced the system up close, Buncombe feels fortunate to have escaped with a few lost hours — an outcome that can play out very differently for others in detention.

"I'm a white guy, a middle-class guy, with a press badge from the State Department who has a job and a fixed home, and because of that I was able to get out without even having to pay bond or bail," he said. "Lots of other people didn't, and lots of other people are stuck in the system because they don't have access to bail money. Millions of people are stuck in America's jails because they can't afford bail."

Buncombe said the Seattle Police Department told him his case was forwarded to the Office of Police Accountability for review. To date, the OPA has initiated at least 28 separate probes into allegations of police misconduct since the protests began in late May.