Repercussions from decisions to deploy blast balls and gas on Capitol Hill protesters in the early days of last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle have landed on the head of a now former assistant police chief.

Seattle Police confirms that former Assistant Chief Steve Hirjak has been demoted following Chief Adrian Diaz’s Wednesday announcement of “staff change” at the department.

The demotion follows Diaz’s decision earlier this month to reverse findings from Seattle’s police accountability office that determined an officer improperly ordered the deployment of crowd control tactics in “the pink umbrella incident” — the moment the night of June 1st that set off a riot on Capitol Hill as police reacted to a umbrella thrust over the barrier outside the East Precinct at 11th and Pine with a barrage of pepper spray and blast grenades that led to a night filled with clouds of tear gas throughout Pike/Pine and a major clash with protesters and helped to set off a summer of unrest in the city.

“As I noted, I did not believe it was fair or principled to hold the Named Employee responsible for circumstances created at a higher rank of command, where fundamentally I believe accountability for the outcome of the weekend of May 29th – June 1st should land,” Diaz wrote in the letter announcing the demotion. “We owe it to both the community and to our officers who are tasked to operate within a framework rooted in command decisions to ensure that we identify and address root causes of outcomes that we all can acknowledge were problematic.”

The “Named Employee” officer, Lt. John Brooks, was cleared after Diaz’s intervention. But Diaz, the interim leader of the city’s police department, said the investigation and discipline process, “as well as on-going broader assessments of what occurred that day,” had revealed new information.

Publicola first reported the situation around Diaz, Brooks, and Hirjak:

When the OPA first launched its investigation into the June 1 incident, investigators interviewed Hirjak and determined that he had devolved responsibility for tactical decision-making to Brooks. As an assistant chief, Hirjak is not a member of a police union, so if Diaz deemed him responsible for the errors on June 1, the chief could demote him without an investigation.

SPD confirmed Wednesday that Hirjak now holds the rank of captain. Diaz said Hirjak was removed as incident commander last summer following the pink umbrella weekend.

The demotion marks a moment of rare personal responsibility for the complaints, mistakes, and issues raised during the Seattle Police Department’s response to months of protests and demonstrations including the ongoing concerns about the decisions that led to the abandonment of the East Precinct, a situation former Chief Carmen Best continues to attribute to on the ground commanders at 12th and Pine.

KUOW reported this week on a recent podcast appearance by former Chief Best that put blame for the decision to abandon the East Precinct on her command staff:

“I think a few of the commanders,” Best said. “Not simply that ‘we’ve had enough,’ but they were thinking, ‘We’ve been told by the fire department that our building, which has contiguous walls to other buildings, that if it gets set on fire, it’s going up quickly. That’s a danger. And we’d already had the one precinct in Minneapolis that had been burned.’”

In November, CHS reported on the fateful decisions to pull SPD out of the East Precinct building and the tactical, on the ground decisions that led to it.

UPDATE 1:40 PM: The DivestSPD social media watchdog account has posted the results of a Public Disclosure Request for the department Incident Action Plan for June 8th, the day SPD cleared out of the East Precinct.

The document includes a section devoted to the plan to vacate the 12th and Pine facility:

Seattle Police Department policy states: “When Safe, Feasible, and Without Compromising Law Enforcement Priorities, Officers Shall Use De-Escalation Tactics in Order to Reduce the Need for Force.” Priorities of the Seattle Police Department include preservation of life and preservation of property. In support of these priorities, the Department has a stated goal of providing thoughtful resolutions to situations and reducing the likelihood of harm to all persons involved through the application of de-escalation principles. In light of these priorities and the desire to de-escalate whenever safe and feasible, the current mission is to cease police operations out of the East Precinct.

“The goal is to de-escalate the volatile situation at East Precinct, while also providing an opportunity for demonstrators to fulfill a desire to reclaim the streets directly around the precinct,” the plan continues. “However, this raises concerns about the security of equipment, vehicles, weapons, and sensitive materials in the precinct, along with potential for vandalism or arson.”

It goes on to describe “removal of all police personnel from East Precinct, both inside and outside the facility” and “removal of all crowd-control barriers around the East Precinct facility to facilitate demonstrator movements in the area.”

The full plan document, below, shows SPD leadership planned the evacuation and seems to counter Chief Best’s description of the circumstances that led to East Precinct officers retreating from the area of the occupied protest.

“Consistent with the Commander’s Intent to ensure the safety of officers and to protect police facilities from being compromised, the Seattle Police Department will take appropriate action to protect the life and safety of officers and demonstrators,” the plan concludes. “Such action will be objectively reasonable, necessary to protect life and property, and proportional to the behavior of the demonstrators and/or the threat to human life and property and will be prefaced by attempts to de-escalate the situation if feasible and may include the use of less lethal tools.”

This week with the one year anniversary of the police killing of George Floyd, CHS looked back here at the first moments of the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests in the city and the days that led to the formation of the Capitol Hill occupied protest including the days May 29th to June 1st that got Hirjak demoted.

CHOP: One year later — Seattle rises up in protest to the killing of George Floyd

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