Pepper-balls vs. tear gas: How 2020's Black Lives Matter protest in Spokane compares to the immigration demonstration of 2025

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Jun. 12—Over the course of 10 hours in Spokane Wednesday, an impromptu display of civil disobedience became a showdown of smoke and hundreds of fleeing protesters, leading to more than 30 arrests outside an ICE facility near Riverfront Park.
The smoke has since cleared, leaving some protesters questioning the efficacy of law enforcement's de-escalation tactics and crowd control strategies as well as finger-pointing about who escalated what.
To Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown, that depends on where you're standing.
"People's perspectives vary dramatically, and it can be based on literally how many feet away they were in different locations, and their experience is very directly related to what they personally experienced and observed," Brown said in an interview Thursday.
To some, Brown said the escalation began when a handful of federal agents started shoving a human chain of protesters blocking their exit from the ICE facility's gated parking lot. To others, it was the arrival of Spokane Police about an hour later, or their use of PepperBalls and smoke grenades an hour after that, Brown said. Maybe it was when hundreds of other protesters joined the smaller group, marching up Washington Street toward a police skirmish line, the mayor said.
The protest involved hundreds of people occupying the streets and solicited the response of 185 Spokane Police officers, as well as around 50 Spokane Sheriff's office deputies, Sheriff John Nowels said.
The 9:30 p.m. curfew Brown called was the first time a Spokane mayor has issued a curfew since May 2020, when a peaceful protest of thousands turned into a riot in downtown Spokane in the wake of the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Floyd's killing morphed into a larger Black Lives Matter protest against police brutality disproportionately targeting Black men.
Then-mayor Nadine Woodward issued an all-night curfew at the time, an order that many defied. Through the night, people looted, vandalized and destroyed windows of downtown businesses, including the downtown Nike store, the first target of looting. Rioters smashed windows of several businesses, and some business owners boarded their stores with plywood during the chaos.
Then-County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich had asked for the assistance of the Washington National Guard.
That night, downtown Spokane was enveloped in a haze of tear gas and flash bangs that Spokane Police fired at protesters and looters in an attempt to quell the riot and disperse crowds. The Spokesman-Review reported multiple injuries as police projectiles like rubber bullets and bean bags struck people, including a 13-year-old girl. Countless people inhaled the tear gas.
For some protesters on Wednesday, the memory still stung as they implored nonviolence from fellow protesters in their acts of civil disobedience in defying law enforcements' orders.
By 7:13 p.m., law enforcement declared the protest an "unlawful assembly" and ordered people to disperse. The orders were announced repeatedly over an intercom as well as from individual law enforcement personnel as they talked to demonstrators.
Some protesters peeled away at this order, while others remained and were later joined by a separate mass of hundreds from another protest nearby.
Defying the order to disperse was an apparent matter of empathy for Ben Stuckart, the former city council president who organized the earlier protest in an attempt to prevent federal agents from taking two detained refugees he knew to the ICE processing facility in Tacoma.
"The crux of the matter is, like yesterday, do I go home, or do I stand up for my friend? And that's, you stand up for your friends and your loved ones, and I think we all need to think of ourselves as one big community," he said.
Nowels said Wednesday's demonstration wasn't a riot, but there was plenty of "unlawful activity" that warranted the law enforcement response and then some, ultimately resulting in more than 30 arrests, including two facing felony charges for "unlawful imprisonment."
Spokane Police requested help from the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office, but by the time approximately two dozen deputies arrived in Spokane, police said they no longer needed their backup around 8 p.m.
"We were there just to offer bodies if needed or any sort of assistance they needed, but they said, 'Actually it's pretty quiet and peaceful here,' so we could leave," said Lt. Jeff Howard, spokesperson from the Kootenai County Sheriff's Department.
The hundreds of protesters who stayed for hours after law enforcement's orders to disperse were breaking the law, Nowels said. There were also more serious criminal actions committed by those blocking exits and obstructing ICE vehicles, ultimately preventing federal employees from leaving the building and vehicle in one instance, which is a class C felony, he said.
"When you're there blocking doors and windows and exits ... that's a felony," he said.
The first orders to disperse came at 7:13 p.m., with the first arrests made around 7:30 p.m. of those surrounding one of the ICE vans with agents inside.
At around 8 p.m., law enforcement deployed PepperBalls and smoke canisters that sent stinging smoke and sparks through the streets, prompting protesters to scatter, holding their shirts to their face while coughing and gagging.
While still in a preliminary review of law enforcement's reports of the protest, Nowels said his deputies fired at least four rounds of less-lethal munitions at four protesters, including three bean bag canisters and one blue nose foam projectile. Each of these protesters threw recently deployed smoke canisters back to the line of law enforcement, Nowels said. When identified, the four protesters will face felony assault charges, Nowels said.
Some Sheriff's deputies on the skirmish line wore bulletproof vests and baseball caps. Others patrolling the scene dressed more tactically in riot gear, carrying firearms and crowd control projectiles with orange tips, as well as other munitions.
"Some of the typical things we have would be 40-millimeter blue nose rounds that are foam and potentially bean bag munitions," Nowels said.
Nowels said his deputies are trained in de-escalation tactics to verbally subdue the crowd, in his limited review of some video footage, he was pleased to see it put to use by deputies talking with protesters on skirmish lines.
"I saw officers and deputies verbally communicate in a very calm way, interacting with the protesters ..." he said. "Our people did everything they could to prevent this from being a violent interaction."
Some protesters disagree — including Stuckart, who came prepared to be arrested. He and 15 or so others planted themselves around two federal vans in an attempt to stop the transport.
Stuckart said he believes the tension ratcheted up significantly when local law enforcement arrived, and that he hopes they and elected officials are "having a very deep conversation and looking inwardly on how their actions are the ones that escalated the situation."
Fellow protester and progressive candidate for City Council Sarah Dixit agreed; she said when law enforcement split the crowd in two, some clad in riot gear, it doesn't inspire calm among the protesters.
"It feels difficult to experience de-escalation when folks are fully fitted with rubber bullet guns, I don't know what the correct term is, and fully armed," Dixit said. "Upon seeing that, that doesn't make me feel any safer."
Some of the 30 or so arrests were done through conversation between police and protesters, some willingly placing their hands behind their back as police walked them through their arrest. Others were more forceful, pushing protesters to the ground as they resisted officers' handcuffs.
"I watched someone get thrown to the ground," Dixit said. "No one was doing any sort of activity that even remotely I could see someone justifying that response."
There were several stark differences between this year's demonstration and those from five years ago. The riot of 2020 involved thousands, whereas Wednesday saw hundreds of people.
Law enforcement's response also differed; Brown said she had a conversation with Spokane Police Chief Kevin Hall "specifically around not using tear gas," she said in an interview Thursday.
Spokane Police also didn't use rubber bullets like in 2020, Hall said at a press conference Wednesday night.
While each event prompted a mayoral curfew, Brown's was less enforced by Spokane Police. Some protesters remained at the intersection of Washington Street and North River Drive long after the 9:30 p.m. order to vacate, though police made no moves to disperse the crowd with more projectiles or make any arrests of those defying the curfew.
On Saturday, Riverfront Park will become the site of a "No Kings" protest planned around the nation in defiance of a military parade on President Donald Trump's 79th birthday and the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary.
At that gathering, expected to draw thousands, Nowels and Stuckart both implored disciplined nonviolence.
"Please help the police by discouraging anyone trying to break the law," Nowels said.
"No matter how frustrated you are, always be non-violent," Stuckart said.
Spokesman-Review Reporters Nick Gibson and Emry Dinman contributed to this report.
Elena Perry's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.