PHOTOS: Elderly woman, pregnant woman hit with pepper spray at Occupy Seattle

Seattle activist Dorli Rainey, 84, reacts after being hit with pepper spray during an Occupy Seattle protest on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at Westlake Park. Bottom right, Seattle Police officers spray to disperse the crowd gathered in the intersection of Pine Street and 5th Avenue. A woman who gave her name as Jennifer and said she was two months pregnant is rushed to a waiting ambulance after being hit with pepper spray at Occupy Seattle Tuesday night. (Photos by Joshua Trujillo, seattlepi.com)

Posted by Joshua Trujillo on November 16, 2011

Dozens of people were hit with pepper spray by Seattle police officers Tuesday night as a group of protesters refused to leave a downtown intersection. (Story here.)
Shoving matches with police and arrests of Occupy Seattle protesters were reporter earlier in the afternoon in the Belltown neighborhood.
But tensions escalated Tuesday night when protesters saw that local activist Dorli Rainey, 84, had been hit directly in the face by pepper spray (photo above). Moments later a woman who identified herself as Jennifer, a regular at the protests, was also sprayed. Frantic people gathered around the woman who said she was two months pregnant. They called an ambulance when breathing became difficult for the woman, she started to vomit and complained of cramping.
Officers seemed to spray indiscriminately as people moved slowly from the street to the sidewalk. They had been warned multiple times by officers to not block traffic in the intersection.
SPD spokesperson Jeff Kappel wrote on the department’s blog that “Pepper spray was deployed only against subjects who were either refusing a lawful order to disperse or engaging in assaultive behavior toward officers.”
The Occupy Seattle protests have tested the patience of police in what has mostly been a cordial back and forth between protesters and officers. Shoving matches have erupted, notably one in the Capitol Hill neighborhood on November, 3rd. But unlike other cities unwillingly hosting Occupy encampments, police have mostly stood on the sidelines in Seattle.
In an email to The Stranger, Dorli Rainey, who is known as a local activist and once ran for mayor of Seattle, said she was on her way to a transportation meeting when she stopped to check out the Occupy Seattle protest.
She said she was interested after the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a resolution in Support of the Occupy Seattle movement.
“Well free speech does have its limits as I found out as the cops shoved their bicycles into the crowd and simultaneously pepper sprayed the so captured protesters,” she told The Stranger.
She credited Iraq war veteran Caleb with keeping her from being trampled by the crowd.
Rainey, who has a blog titled Old Lady in Combat Boots, describes herself on the site as a “political activist and all-around troublemaker.”

Here is a gallery of photos from Tuesday night’s protest.

Here is a video of officers pushing protesters onto the sidewalk from Youtube user mediahacker. Note, explicit language in video.



Visit seattlepi.com’s home page for more Seattle news. Contact Joshua Trujillo at joshuatrujillo@seattlepi.com or on Twitter as @joshtrujillo. 

http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2011/11/16/photos-elderly-woman-pregnant-woman-hit-with-pepper-spray-at-occupy-seattle/