Nearly 60 Seattle police officers were injured during weekend clashes with explosive-hurling anti-cop demonstrators, according to the department — which released photos and body-camera footage of the carnage.
“Officers are recovering from protests yesterday where they were struck with explosives, rocks, bottles, and wood,” the department’s public-affairs wrote Sunday, of the Saturday unrest.
“In all 59 officers were injured throughout the day with one of those being hospitalized. Injuries ranged from abrasions and bruising to burns and a torn meniscus.”
The post included a sampling of photographs showing some of the nasty-looking burns and abrasions sustained from the explosions.
Also included was a video stitched together from the footage of four different police body-cameras, rolling throughout the day.
In three of them, small explosives tossed into the midst of the cops go off, nicking officers on their legs.
In the fourth segment, a wooden plank whizzed into the officers’ midst, evidently tossed from a throng of retreating demonstrators.
The department’s East Precinct station house — once the focal point of demonstrators’ since-dismantled “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ) or “Capitol Hill Occupation Protest” (CHOP) — also suffered structural damage from a tossed bomb, police said, an attack under investigation by the Arson/Bomb Squad.
All told, 47 demonstrators were arrested for charges including assault on police officers, obstruction and failure to disperse, as a riot was declared in the city on Saturday, the department said.
The chaos was hardly limited to the Emerald City.
A riot was also declared in Portland, Ore. as thousands of protesters breached a federal courthouse, while unrest also unfolded in Atlanta, Baltimore and New York City.
The nationwide demonstrations are reverberations from the May death of George Floyd, a black man killed when a white Minneapolis cop knelt on his neck.
