Friday’s second night of anti-police protests was a more heated, rowdier march but Seattle Police tell us there were no arrests associated with the crowd that chanted its way around Pike/Pine and up and down Broadway disrupting traffic and making an angry show against SPD brutality. We covered the night’s events here.

Friday night’s march got off to a decidedly more violent start when the crowd marched through downtown and busted out the window of a police cruiser. At one point, pepper spray had to be deployed near Cherry and 1st Ave. When the groups marched to Capitol Hill, there were some minor incidents requiring citations, but SPD says the most significant report on the Hill involved an attempt by a masked marcher to hurl a brick or rock at an officer standing near his car on 12th Ave. The hard object missed both the officer and the cruiser but the masked would-be assailant was able to slip back into the crowd and march away. SPD also reports no injuries in the night’s activities.

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In the Central District early Saturday morning, somebody targeted the 23rd and Union SPD substation with a firebomb that caused a burst of flame but no significant damage.

Tuesday night, the Hill will see more focus on police brutality — but this event, one hopes, should be a bit calmer. Here’s the info on a community forum being organized by Revolution Books and a group called the Revolutionary Student Club:

Community Forum: An Epidemic of Police Brutality and Murder

Come if you are serious about stopping police brutality and demanding that Ian Birk be prosecuted for murder!

Seattle Central Community College

Revolution Books and the Revolutionary Student Club present:

An Epidemic of Police Brutality and Murder:

Why Is It happening? How Can We Stop It?

February 22, Tuesday

Doors open 6:00 pm, program starts at 6:30pm

Seattle Central Community College, Room BE 1110 (Auditorium)

.A Panel Discussion with:

Lynn Domingo, October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality and LELO

Orpheus Reed, writer for Revolution Newspaper

Ophelia Ealy, Chairperson, Michael Randall Ealy Social Justice Foundation, founded after her son was killed by Seattle police in 1998.

James Bible, Seattle King County NAACP

Free Admission. Suggested donation: $5-$10

Info: [email protected] , [email protected]

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=179633045413462

more about the event below:

Native carver John T. Williams—shot within 4 seconds by SPD cop Ian Birk. Birk claims he was threatened, but John T Williams didn’t even have time to turn toward Birk before he was shot 4 times. David Young, shot in his car as it was pinned into a fence by police in Federal Way. Chris Harris, body slammed into a wall head first and put into a coma after being wrongly targeted and chased by a King county police officer. Police beatings of young girls in jail cells and on the street are recorded on videotape and the cops walk. In Detroit, 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones is shot by police in a raid of the wrong apartment. In Oakland, Oscar Grant is shot in the back as he lay on a train platform by BART police, and the officer who shot him is only convicted on involuntary manslaughter. In Seattle and around the country, a horrifying epidemic of police murder and brutality continues and even intensifies. No end, and no justice in sight.

Many people are rightly outraged at these actions by police. But why is this happening? What is the cause of it, and most importantly, how can it be stopped? At a time when these injustices happen time after time, when the police repeatedly get off after committing these horrible acts, and when a decision by the King County prosecutor on whether to charge Ian Birk is imminent, finding answers to these questions that many people from different backgrounds are agonizing over, is crucially important.

Are these problems the cause of “bad apples” on the police force? Can they be solved by firing the “bad” police, changing police training or community building? Or do we face a systemic problem requiring mass protest, resistance, revolution? What will it take to win justice in the Williams case and to finally end police brutality? How can people act to make this happen? Members of the forum panel will speak to these urgent questions from different viewpoints but from a common desire to end this brutality for good. We invite the audience to join in this urgent conversation and participate in finding avenues to act and solutions.