this is Free Range, a co-production of KYRS and Range Media. This is Aaron Hedge. Um, I'm flying solo today. Luke and Val and Aaron Sellers all had other places to be. But I'm joined here in the studio today by Anwar Peace, who's a former chair of the Spokane Human Rights Commission and a current commissioner. And Anwar is here to chat with me about a series of arrests that made big news in Spokane on Tuesday morning. we just wanted to explore those arrests from. The perspective of you know, a human rights commissioner also, Anwar is a long time police accountability activist, uh, both in Seattle and in Spokane. How long have you been working in that, in that area? Anwar, it's been decades, right? It's it's been about 25 years. Yeah. 25 years. Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks for joining me on the radio today. I really appreciate your time. So just to kind of set the table the, the, the factual landscape of what happened on Tuesday morning, um, we got word about six 30 in the morning. I got, actually got a text from Anwar that, justice for all, uh, was arrested by US Marshals. Justice had previously been arrested by local authorities for their participation in the June 11th protests against the ICE detention of two immigrants who were in the United States legally. Um, they wanted to process them for deportation, even though they were here legally. And a bunch of local Spokane mobilized and went and blocked the van that those immigrants would've been transported from the ICE facility to I, I assume that the Tacoma Detention Facility, and I think eventually they were transported over there, but the, um, the folks who showed up and protested blocked the vans for a number of hours. And that's kind of the, the genesis of these arrests that happened on Tuesday morning. All of the people who were arrested were present at that June 11th protest. And they're accused of federal crimes, including I believe it's conspiracy to impede or assault, uh, federal officers. And then there were two people who were charged with actual assault of officers. Those two people, I believe, are still in detention at the Spokane County Jail. The Spokane County Jail works with the US Marshals. Um, that's not technically a violation of the, of Washington's, uh, sanctuary sanctuary law that basically bars local agencies from helping federal agencies enforce immigration law because they're technically not enforcing immigration law. But there's, I think there's a lot of folks who feel like it, it violates the spirit of that law. Um. The rest of the seven people were, uh, released on their own recognizes on on their own recognizance later Tuesday evening. And they're all gonna stand a jury trial. But yeah, I just wanted to get an war's perspective on, on this series of events and was deeply embedded in the communities that that showed up to basically go against, uh, what ICE was doing to these immigrants. And has a really like deep and long perspective on law enforcement violence against communities that are underrepresented. Um, so I'd like to start. I I don't think we've talked specifically about those protests on June 11th. So I, I'd like to just kind of get your, your perspective on that. Like, what was your personal experience of that? Like, were, were you at the protests? When did you find out about them and what was y Yeah, like how did you, well, first, I, I just want to thank range for having me today as well as your range is wonderful reporting on this subject. So I just wanna first give a shout out to y'all. Thank you for me. On the 11th I happened to be in Tacoma for a Department of Health, uh, conference. We were making our way to there when we, when I first got the alert that. There was gonna be some kind of action that day. And it was really difficult for me because I was halfway uh, to Tacoma when I was like, oh my gosh, this is very serious. I want to be there. And so, um, unfortunately I was not there, but I did observant from afar. And I've taken painstaking efforts to try to look at the footage of that. Since, like you said I'm a police accountability expert and so for 25 years I've studied protests, what they look like, how police respond, what kind of less than lethal munitions are used. And so for me, the 11th was very jaw dropping to me because the type of police authoritarian power that I saw it's something that makes me remember WTO over in Seattle and that kind of over. Policing of First Amendment rights of the crowd. Can, can you tell, tell the audience what WTO was? It was a WTO was, uh, in 1999, it was the World Trade Organization was beating in Seattle. And and so 150,000 people flooded the streets of downtown Seattle to stop that conference, which we did. That conference was going on for a week, and because we stopped the conference, um, martial law was actually declared in downtown Seattle. And we actually had federal troops come downtown and, and secure downtown. And so it was a really scary time. And so watching that take place back in 1999 and then seeing what took place on the 11th here reminded me a lot of what I witnessed back in 99. The aspect of police overpowering a group of very peaceful, calm protestors was something that was very jaw dropping for me to see. And the aspect that we also have a state law, um, in the state that talks about how police are supposed to respond in crowd control situations and the deployment of less than lethal munitions in those types of situations. And who is authorized on that? And what I saw from afar from Tacoma, it looked like nobody knew who was in charge that day because the sheriff's office was doing one thing. SPD was doing a different thing. Obviously the ice officers were down to just best people up. Either way we looked at it. And that's really, we saw at the beginning of the protests, we saw ice agents were shoving and in some cases beating some of the protesters who'd showed up to, to block the protests. And then when local law enforcement showed up, I think there were like 185 Spokane officers. Mm-hmm. I don't know how many sheriff were there. But yeah, they weren't, they weren't, they didn't seem like they were all on the same page. 'cause SPD didn't want to use or said they didn't want to use, uh, rubber bullets less than lethal ammunition. The county was using that ammunition. Um, and there's a lot of like. You know, different narratives about exactly what happened. Well, that's one of my major concerns right now was who was actually in control of that scene. State law says that the highest elected official in that jurisdiction is the only one that is able to authorize less than lethal munitions during crowd control situations. So we have, and I've I've heard from people inside City Hall that on the 11th the mayor was not sure if. She had control and authorization to authorize that. And we know that the sheriff has had a longstanding since this law was passed. The sheriff believes that they are the highest, uh, elected official, and they are the only ones that can authorize it. And so it is this very interesting dynamic of the mayor's power, the sheriff's power, who's authorized for that. And you kind of see this play out in the charges that, that took place that were dismissed because the sheriff wanted to go forward with charging folks under county code, not the city code. And again, that disconnect of who's actually in charge here. And so I, I have a lot of questions about the police actions as well as. We were just talking about a minute ago about the ICE officers and that initial encounter that took place in front of the, um, their gate where we had numerous community leaders stand on a sidewalk to block the entry of the gate. Not on federal property, not anywhere near federal property on a, it was, it was the public sidewalk on Washington Street there. Oh, exactly. And so the footage that you see is ICE officers coming up to those folks without giving police orders or commands and assaulting those, those folks. One of those folks I saw assaulted in that way was Jack Archer. Mm-hmm. Which was just federally charged. They weren't originally arrested on the 11th. That's right. But. Because of that interaction with those ice officers on that public sidewalk, they, they are now charged with a federal crime, even though they weren't on federal property. And there was no police commands by those O ICE officers to begin with, which again is against state law because our state law says any time force is used, you have to first deescalate, try to attempt to deescalate. That did not take place on the 11th with those ice officers. Okay? So this was a complex series of events. A number of people were arrested on June 11th. I, I believe 31 was the count. And they were all let go. Their charges were, were dropped by the, by the city. Justice Foral was, was later arrested on, on during, during the pride events here in Spokane. And they were charged under a county warrant on, uh, charges of unlawful imprisonment, which basically I, I think the contention is that Justice had blocked the ICE officers from leaving the facility, and that constituted unlawful imprisonment. Um, justice is facing a trial for that charge as well. They've pleaded not guilty. And then, and that, that kind of for, for, for a number of weeks. A lot of these folks, uh. Had the, the, the authorities had their, their communication methods, their cell phones, some of 'em had their backpacks and other belongings, uh, held in police custody. A lot of 'em couldn't make ends meet because some of them work in the gig economy where they need their, their smartphone to work. Um, and some of those phones were turned over to the FBI. And I, I think that's part of the, the setting of the table that led to these arrests on, on Tuesday morning. And so. Let, let's, let's bring it up to, to that point, I believe there were, there were five people who were arrested by the feds who had not been arrested by local authorities on the 11th. The other four had been arrested. And I believe that they must have gotten some information that they're basing their charges on from, from those people's phones. But yeah. Can we, we do the same thing with, with Tuesday morning. What was your, and you, we, we had a conversation shortly after the arrests were made. But can you tell me about your experience Tuesday morning, I believe you were called by Justice's partner. Yeah. I received a call around six ish, uh, in the morning. And, uh, from Justice's partner to let me know that, uh, US Marshalls had came and arrested him. And, uh. I, I am not a very good morning person, so it took me a minute to really process what I was hearing. Sure. And that's when I was like, okay, let's, I, I told Justice's partner to go ahead and continue their phone tree, and I would continue my phone tree. And my phone tree included you as well. And alerting community members and, and and, and folks that could have an impact on helping Justice. I alerted those folks about that in the morning. I, I, one of my first, people that I did text was, uh, Ben Stucker. Mm. And it was very curious. 'cause at six in the morning I'm giving him a text and he's not responding to me. I'm thinking, okay, maybe he's a heavy sleeper. Mm-hmm. But I would later find out that he was also arrested that around that same time as well. And so yeah, these arrests are really shocking because a lot of these folks have already had charges placed upon them and are awaiting trial. And so there will be a judicial process to this. Um, but the fact that the, um, federal government decided that. They were going to say that any social media posts asking the community to rally and support is now some kind of conspiracy charge. That is absolutely mind-boggling to me. And as far as Ben Ben's participation in the event, I never saw Ben even come close to assaulting an officer. I never saw Ben coming close to trying to get the crowd to assault an officer, but he's facing these serious accu accusations of conspiracy, of wanting to harm police officers. This is, this is some very bizarre stuff. One of the people that were charged was charged for quote unquote throwing a incendiary device. I've, that's right. I've seen that charge only take place. A few times in protests both locally and nationally, where people will come to a protest with fireworks and then they will discharge those fireworks at officers. That's what's called eend, right? What this person did was they picked up an empty canister and threw it back at the police line. It was already exploded, and so they were only throwing a tin can at the officers, but these charges make it look like that this person came to the protest with some kind of explosive device wanting to harm officers, and that's not the case. So when we look at these charges, we really actually need to look at what was actually taking place and does, does what we see on the video match. The level of seriousness of these charges, and I don't believe they do. And given that description of what constitutes an incendiary device the, the police had fired that device. It was not, that was not deployed by the protestors. The, the person who threw it, Mickey Hatfield, one of the person, one of the people who's charged in the indictment with assault and is still in custody, just picked the can up and threw it back into the police line. And as you said, it was already deployed. And on one of the other things that I wanted to highlight is like, this is coming from the, you know, the highest rung of the Justice Department. Not the highest rung, but it was, it was, these arrests were ordered by Stephanie Benmar, the, the acting US attorney here in Eastern Washington. And, and I must note that acting. Yeah, part of the title like this really is something that it, it definitely feels politically motivated and it feels like this US attorney is trying to make a name for themselves in these charges because I'm not sure I'm not sure if they need to be sin confirmed, but the fact that they're acting and they're acting in this kind of way, shape, and form in our community does not make me think that they're gonna last long in our community, representing our community in a legal way. And so this to me feels like, some kind of political theater that's taken place and this acting us attorney thinks they know what justice is, thinks they know what our community is. They don't, our community stand up on the 11th to demand that our human rights are being violated by ICE officers at that detention facility. And this US attorney should be spending more time on what's taken place inside that detention facility to find out whether or not there's any abuse taking place in that detention facility and not spending their energy on charging prominent community leaders. This is a waste of the federal government's time, energy, talent. Um, lawyers are talented folks, and so the fact that the US attorney is devoting a, a significant portion of lawyers to deal with, uh, these charges is absolutely ridiculous. So I look forward to maybe being able to spend some time with this acting US attorney and maybe picking their brain to find out what is actually going on and find out whether or not they actually represent our community. That's a really good segue in some of my next question. Um, I think, it, it seems to me, and this is, probably partly from my like life experiences, like a pretty privileged white, straight dude, um, not really part of any marginalized communities. It seems like given, the agencies that were involved in, in these arrests, there was the US Marshals. We know that the FBI was involved in securing scenes. We have reports from, from some of the folks who were arrested that the DA was also mm-hmm. Also involved. We know the sheriff was involved and we see this. I see this kind of strengthening of the ecosystem web of law enforcement. But I'm, given who I am, I'm like, I'm not totally sure if that's just my, like, what, what the right would call Trump derangement syndrome. Are things intensifying? Are they, are they getting worse? You're, you're embedded in these communities. Yeah, I am. I definitely do love and appreciate our, our law enforcement brothers and sisters out there. Mm-hmm. I, uh, they have a hard job out there. And you know, when, when I'm in trouble, I call 9 1 1. And, and and totally respect and honor the profession. With that being said for some reason law enforcement attracts a very conservative type of person with, with potential Trump tendencies. We've seen this play out recently here locally where an officer with SPD, um, was fired for lying about putting on a bumper sticker onto his squad car, and the bumper sticker was a let's go Brandon squad or a sticker. And the officer tried to pretend, oh, he didn't know what the political meaning behind it was, even though he had made statements saying that he did know what those statements were about. And so the aspect of Trump being in office now and. The possibility of federal law enforcement backing up our local law enforcement, I'm sure is very tantalizing for some of, um, our conservative law enforcement folks out there. The problem is it violates the constitution and violates state law by the actions that have been taking place here. At least two state laws have been violated with this protest. Can you outline those please? That is the, um, the law that states that, uh, before officers use force, they have to first de try to attempt deescalate. And two the other law deals with how, uh, less than lethal munitions are utilized and who authorizes those. So those are two state laws. Those state laws came about in the 2021 police reform, um, that the state legislature put forth. And those were the few laws that didn't get rolled back from those all. I think we passed like seven bills in that session dealing with police reform. And um, I think four of them got rolled back the next year. Mm-hmm. But these state laws are there to protect you, me, and also the officers. And, and so that's what one of my concerns is, especially with the deescalation law. Those ice officers did not do that at that gate. And by them not doing that, they weren't actually acting in police authority. Right. And so for me, looking at it, I see some masked individuals pushing, shoving, harming folks. And if that was me masked up doing that thing, I would be charged with assault. So I'm calling for those ice officers to have assault charges placed on them because they did not use police powers when they were pushing and shoving and choke, slamming people down to the onto the ground. I also have concerns about those ICE officers mentality as well when I read the charging documents that commissioner Ferral is accused of in those charging documents. The ICE officers actually talk about the fact that they broke into their armory during the protest and got guns. And live ammunition and body armor out. And then they took, um, they took measures inside the facility to take defensive positions with that armament because their perception of that peaceful protest, somehow those peaceful protestors were gonna storm the ICE facility and they prepared for such a siege. And so the mentality of these ICE officers from JUMP was, let's break out the long guns, let's break out the ammunition, not go have a conversation with their fellow community members. These ICE officers might have been masked, but in court documents, we've got their names. That's right. And they live in our community. And so these community members are ICE officers and we're one of the few jurisdictions that actually has the identities of ICE officers. And so I'm calling on these ice officers to be charged with assault as well as if there's any smart lawyers out there, maybe potentially sue these ICE officers as well. We've gotta take a proactive stance on what's taken place here, and if the federal government is gonna leap in here like this, we've gotta respond in a way that is respectful and using the law to address this. And so a class action lawsuit should also be filed on what took place on the 11th. Legal remedies need to be addressed and taken up to deal with this situation. It's great to go protesting on the streets, but we need to also take actions. Sounds like maybe you feel like maybe the, the community that is trying to stand against this is maybe a little bit. Honest back foot because a lot, a lot of what these folks have is, is their ability to protest, but it needs to be ratcheted up to a more official level. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, um, the, there's also been some conversation around, uh, what it means to be a human rights commissioner with, with legal charges on you. And well, can, first, can you talk about, you said something really interesting on the phone the other day. Just to, to tee up what you're gonna say. You, you talked about, and, and at the time that we talked, we only, I think we only knew that Justice and Ben had been arrested. Mm-hmm. Um, but you mentioned to me that Justice was doing their job as a human rights commissioner. Mm-hmm. Showing up and trying to. Trying to stop what was happening from happening. Can you, can you just kind of like reprise that a little bit? Yeah. You know, I'm, I've made public statements before about, you know, what it means to be a human rights commissioner. And in this time and in this space, it, it means differently than maybe it did, you know, 15 years ago to be a human rights commissioner as a commission, we have to actively stand up for human rights violations and acts of uh, civil rights issues, right? And the element of what was taking place on the 11th was people were getting kidnapped without due process. That's a human rights violation right there. So the fact that a human rights, you're, you're talking about the, the immigrants who were here illegally who had been arrested and were being processed for deportation. Absolutely. Due process is what our coun country is founded upon. The only other time I can think of in this country where we were okay with people being kidnapped was during slavery days and having slave catchers go, go snatch people off the streets. I will note that back then it was against the law to assault a slave catcher. And I don't know, I'm a black man. If I was transported back in time and saw a slave catcher, I don't know what I would do, but I definitely might give them some stern words and, um, might, might take action because I would see something that is being unjust in front of me. On the 11th, those ice officers, what they did, not only kidnapping, but then harming our, the rest of our community and their actions. The aspect of what it means to be a human rights commissioner means to stand up for these things. And sometimes we, as commissioners stand up. We say things that might uh, the politicians might not like. Um, I can remember a time when I proposed a homeless Bill of Rights and our mayor did not specifically like that. I'm cool with that. We as human rights commissioners have to push the envelope. We have to be the conscience of the city. And what Commissioner For All did on the 11th was exactly what our commission is designed to do, and that is to stand up and call out human rights violations. So I know that there's talk at City Hall about the potential removal of commissioner Ferral from the commission. And I would first say before any talk of that takes place, city council members should have a conversation with the Human Rights Commission first to find out if we want that removal to take place. And then second, any City Council member that's thinking about removing Commissioner for All should first take a tour of that ICE detention facility because it is in the city purview to be inspected because it's in a commercial building. So code code enforcement can go in there. Nobody's gone in there to check whether or not they have detainees in there for over 24 hours. If they do, again, that would be against state law. So it's up to our electeds to find out what is going on. And this, our Human Rights Commission stands with justice. And, and, and what they did, because they called out an issue that. Screams a human rights violation and the fact that due process isn't taking, taking place and, and just yesterday's arrest somebody's partner was arrested and taken by ice and is, is now being deported. So even as we speak, these deportations are taking place in Spokane. And so it's for us as a human rights commission to stand with Commissioner Feral. And I can't say enough about how proud I am of of having commissioner feral on the commission and being a part of the city. Thank you for saying that. You were gonna talk, you were gonna say something about what it means to be a commissioner with these charges levied against 'em. Yeah. It's a scary place. Um, there are a lot of there are a lot of stipulations that commissioner Feral is gonna, is gonna have to deal with in different jurisdictional courts. He's got different conditions in each one of these court settings. And so, yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be difficult, um, for them. I've, I've faced something similar during my time as a human rights commissioner where I caught, oh no, a jaywalking charge. And those same powers that be in city Hall wanted to remove me for a jaywalking charge. Mm-hmm. So it is quite comical on what level of seriousness can get you kicked off. I don't know if it's the seriousness or if it's the skin color. But we'll leave it at that Justice for All is, is a person of color. Yes. And so, it's gonna be difficult for Commissioner for all because they've got, there's conditions that they can't talk to co-defendants and what does that actually mean? Um, because they, you know, commissioner Feral also has a day job with Scar and so the Spokane community against Racism. Thank you. I keep forgetting not to do acronyms. Oh, it's okay. That's what, that's what I'm here for. Um, but yeah they've got that position at Scar and they send out newsletters mm-hmm. Reg quite regularly. Well, if any of these defendants are on that email list server, that could be technically violating the conditions and terms because it would be direct communications. Co-defendants, so trying to figure out this landscape on, on top of that, Jack Archer is technically Justice's boss and they have to work together. Yeah, that's a good point. Yes. And, and, and that, that creates a, and the judge created an exemption for that, but that was, that was what they were trying to do was, you know, keep people who are in a tight community from Yeah. Being able to talk to each other and, sorry, go ahead. And, and, and that also limits Justice's ability, ability to interact with community going, going to community events, you know, what happens if, you know, some of these co-defendants are there and, and, and all that element as well as the constant reminder that. Federal probation could take 'em at any time. That's right. They're, they're not, they're, they're very restricted in, in what they can do. Yeah. And even, things that are legal here in Washington the federal government doesn't think some of those things are legal. And so those are prohibitions as well, which is also is also a way that they can get caught up and have the federal parole officers come get them as well. And so there are so many conditions that, that have been placed on these defendants. And so, my heart goes out to 'em because I've, I've faced similar issues in my time over in Seattle, uh, where I had to deal with similar kind of court issues like this. And it does. Affect your ability to be a community leader when you're facing these kind of charges. You're finding your, your time is now devoted on defending yourself instead of actually doing the good work of positive change in our community. And so it diverts the energy of activists and so it is political theater what the federal government is doing, but it's also a, um, a very interesting strategy of being able to drain the energy of our activist community by having them to have to defend themselves instead of trying to fight this administration. It's like flicking a switch and altering a, like a, a circuit. Mm-hmm. Where okay. Um, you're, you, you know a lot of people, you're deeply embedded in these communities. You, you work as an activist, you work on the Human Rights Commission. Um, you worked in behavioral health. From your perspective, and I don't know to what level you can speak for the community, but like from your perspective, like how are people doing right now? It's, is it, it's, um, people are really scared. I've never seen this level of, of fear in a community before. Never. Never even from Seattle. Even from Seattle. The aspect that people are having to make safety plans on, Hey, if you don't hear from me. Every five hours, please check the jail roster or please, check in on my kids or, or whatnot because the, the potential of these charges and the potential of, okay, well now, now we know that people that weren't arrested on the 11th are now getting charged with, with, with stuff. Nobody knows who's next. And so everybody is trying to check on each other. You know, people are telling people where, where their passwords are for their computers, and here's funds, you know, soc drawer over here, and, you know, the, the extra key to my house is here, please water my plants if I go away. People are creating these safety plans because they don't know when the federal government's gonna kick in their door. Hmm. They don't know if when they're out trying to get some groceries, whether or not they're going to encounter a felony stop by federal agents. And, and doing, doing a traffic stop. I mean, nobody knows right now what's gonna take place. And so it is very scary. Um, and not only that you know, I, I'm speaking about community leaders and whatnot, but I also have to talk about the fear that our, our immigrant community is dealing with as well. Right. And that's, that's what's underneath all of this. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We're, you know, we're just trying to be the tip of the spear for our immigrant community. So, so they don't have to do this. I'm sure our immigrant community would've loved to have flooded the ICE facility to protest on the 11th, but. That would've been problematic, right? Yeah. Put a lot of them in danger. Yeah. Yeah. And so we would see after the 11th the Mexican consulate saw that there was such an issue here, and they actually came to Spokane from Seattle to set up shops so people could get paperwork their, their documents that they needed. And I didn't know this. Yeah. And so during that timeframe at that location, ICE continued to circle and surveil that neighborhood. And so another call at action went out to the community, which could be another conspiracy charge by the way. But that community was asked to come and be volunteers and walk with our immigrant community from their cars to the Mexican consulate, um, uh, at Latinos in Spokane. And make sure that everybody had escorts to and from their cars to make sure that ICE wouldn't be able to pick them up. And so we saw throughout that week, ICE doing surveillance right there and like full daylight driving by in intimidating. Uh, now I've, I haven't gotten any reports that any stops took place, but the community was alerted, the community came out, the community escorted our immigrant folks because of the aspect of what ICE is doing in our community. So we all talk about what happened on the 11th, but ICE is actively taking weird steps in our community. To actually become a police agency in our community. It's one thing to ask immigrants to come into the ice office and check in with them and then them potentially getting arrested, but it's a completely different thing. If ICE is driving around our streets, doing traffic stops and pulling people over without a warrant and making arrests, that is different. And again, that would be violating state law because of our Washington Safe Act. So all of this is very problematic and the level of fear is just tremendous out there. Nobody knows what's gonna happen next. And my understanding of the 11th, one of the reasons why the, the city administration did clear the streets was because the attorney General of the state advised them to do so, otherwise. There was fear that n National Guard troops would be here. And so May Mayor, mayor Lisa Brown confirmed this, the, at the press conference, that one of the motivations behind her decision was, you know, we need to put this down before the feds come in and do it. Yeah. And so we made that social contract back on the 11th. We will clear the streets so the Feds don't come. Well, guess what? The feds came yesterday. They're here now. They're actively taking steps to scare the hell out of our community for something that was a very peaceful protest. I, like I said, 25 years, I've watched protests from around the country and the globe. The 11th was one of the most peaceful protests that I could ever have ever watched, but yet it's being turned into some kind of riot. And we've seen this before in Spokane, and we have, we have county commissioners calling it a riot. Yeah. Yeah. And so back in George Floyd, they called it a riot as well. Again, a riot is not, A riot is not about having less than lethal munitions release. A riot is violence. Bloodshed people dying and being maimed. That's what a riot is. Nobody got hurt on the 11th. Nobody got hurt during George Floyd. The only people that got hurt during George Floyd was people that were there was one gentleman that, uh, had a broken jaw. Because a one of those Inc. Ary rounds was fired directly at his face. And several other people had broken ribs from similar devices as well. And so, no, what you're saying is like it was any violence that was inflicted was inflicted on the protestors by police rather than the other way around. Exactly. And on the 11th, you see the same thing play out. Those peaceful protestors did not harm those officers. They did not need to release those weapons. And again, we've got an SPD dialogue unit that specifically trained to try to talk protestors and to talk with folks. Those officers weren't even offered to this protest. They went off, instead of bringing the the dialogue team, they brought the munitions team to the scene. Right. That is a disconnect. Again, Washington State law says anytime for force is used, you have to do everything to deescalate a situation screaming orders at, at people. Please leave the scene. That's not deescalation. That's giving police commands. Deescalation is having a a, a series of conversations, seeing what the motive behind the other person is and seeing where there's, there could be a compromise to to, to the scenario. That didn't play out on the 11th. It was, and you can clearly also see the difference between SPD and the sheriff's office. We're gonna see that the most of the munitions that were utilized were from the sheriff's office. That's correct. So again, who has the authority to release those? Is it the mayor or is it the sheriff? I still haven't got an answer as well as I still haven't got an answer on what Chief Hall was doing, where he was at. Was he actually in command of his officers? I'm waiting for that, uh, after action report from the police ombudsman. I'm really looking forward to that. A a lot of information that we're still, that we still have questions about are, are gonna come out in, in documents and those will have to be interrogated and I'm sure, I'm sure there will be a lot of debate over, what the, what those documents say, um, including from the ombudsman and, subsequent police reports, which take a very long time to, to reach the public. I want to switch gears a little bit. I, and obviously like, you know, you say people are scared things are really, really bad. You moved here from Seattle. Remind me how long ago it was? 2014. 2014. And I believe you moved here to work at a car wash, be at peace From, from, from this police activism. I think you wanted to do some riot. Yeah. The good old days. Talk about, and you know, SPD and, and I don't have a lot of perspective on this 'cause I've only been reporting on law enforcement for about six months and but, but I'd like to, we've talked about this at your home. Tell me about what made you get back into police activism and what made you realize you needed to, to be a voice in this, in this ecosystem? Yeah, so I, I, like you were saying, I moved over, um, here from, uh, Seattle 2014 and I was really hoping to, um. Kind of relax, kind of, semi-retire from activism because you've been through a lot in Seattle. Yeah. Like I had the police chief put a restraining order on me, and I had to take that to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. And it was, it was really, uh, cr crazy and stressful times. Having a, a police department of 1400 officers all know that your, their boss hates you. And every time one of these officers drove, drove by me, I would have some kind of interaction that they would want to show me their displeasure, let's say, um, by detaining me. And so moving here was a way of not having that. Constant fear of officer interaction. And I really had planned on, like laying back, you know, I, I, I came here, I, I watched the news like everybody else. And so I did find it odd when I saw a news story, uh, when I first moved here of a, uh, veteran, um, detective and his wife, who was also a detective for SPD. The DEA actually intercepted packages of steroids, illegal steroids that were being shipped to their house. And so the DA then alerted SPD and thinking that there was gonna be some kind of criminal charges that took place, but instead, SPD then. Just asked these two nice detectives that had been working for 18 years to just retire and no criminal charges would take place. So I thought that was kind of odd. I thought it was also kind of odd when the police chief got mired in the sex scandal and people at City Hall started getting fired. Oh, I thought that that was kind of odd. Not enough to get me to be back in activism. What happened was I was working at a car wash here on division and an officer d showed his displeasure with me not informing him what my name is. And because of that interaction a different officer came to my, um, uh, work and talked to my supervisor and, uh, tried to have me fired from the car wash. And when that didn't work, um, the officer then alerted my headquarters down in California about this interaction. And so, um, there was a wonderful story in the spokesman review about, um, this interaction that I had. I actually eventually had a mediation meeting with this officer. But that's when I realized that I needed to come back out was my interaction with Officer Chris Johnson. At the time that we had the mediation we had like a two hour meeting and as we were walking out, the police ombudsman asked officer Johnson, now that you know everything about Mr. Peace, would you do the same thing you did that night? And Officer Johnson said, you know what, I'll probably get in trouble for saying this, but yeah, I would do exactly the same thing because what Mr. Peace did was mess with junior officers. And as a senior officer, I have to defend them. And so both me and the ombudsman kind of looked at each other and we're like, wow. That was a very honest, bold statement. Mm-hmm. The officer left and I told the ombudsman and the mediator the way that this officer lets his emotions run, how he does his work. Um. Very shortly, this officer's gonna be involved in officer involved shooting and sure enough, six months later he was, officer Johnson since then has killed four people in our community and has been involved with two shootings, which both of those shootings, the city is settling with those families for both $4 million. So this Officer Johnson, who remember, tried to get me fired, went on to kill people, which the city has had to pay out $8 million in claims for so far, and there's still more claims coming. Mm-hmm. That's the reason why I came back out as an activist. Seeing the behavior of what Chris Johnson is made me realize that there was a real sickness in this force and something needed to be done and somebody needed to stand up for it. And so, like I was saying. Earlier about, watching a police chief get mired in a sex scandal where he had to resign. It's very interesting the fact that in most organizations, when the CEO is caught up in a sex scandal, the thing that happens with the next CEO is everybody in the company then goes through sexual harassment training. SPD has not done any of that since our, that that chief got, uh, fired, uh, for that sex scandal. And not having that sexual harassment training has shown we have had three officers either be convicted or charged with rape. Two of those, those situations happen with officers raping other officers. There is a sickness in this police force. And even though I wanted to semi-retire and write a book about my experience over in Seattle, I found myself having to stand back up and be an activist here because there is so much, so much of a crisis here with us being the fourth deadliest police force in the nation. Well, on that note I'd like, my final question is, we're, we're glad that you're, you're doing this work. I don't think we could do our jobs if you all weren't doing similar things. Activism, digging up records knowing people. What is it that, is there, is there anything that, that brings you hope in this moment? Yeah, uh, this community. This community is a shiny beacon of hope. We, we might not all agree with everybody's stance or whatnot, but the amount of love that I see in our community is overwhelming. And that's one of the reasons why when I came here in 2014, I wanted to stay here because there are so many good loving community organizations that are doing powerful work. We've got a, uh, wonderfully talented, um, immigrant community, uh, that, you know, we've got a Marshallese population here that is the third largest population in the state in the United States. It, it is remarkable to be here and be in space with so many wonderful community members. And so the hope that I have is every day walking out on the streets of Spokane, seeing, smiling happy faces, enjoying our community. That's what brings me happiness and, and hope and our peace. Thanks for being here with me. Free Range is a weekly news and public affairs program presented by Range Media and produced by Range Media and KYRS Community Radio,