A Seattle Police officer has kicked Tim Crowley out of Seattle Center for a year.
Crowley is the campaign manager for Free Speech Seattle, the group trying to bring back posters to Seattle telephone poles. He was gathering signatures at the Seattle Center last Friday during a concert, when two Seattle Center employees approached him and told him to remove the campaign sign he had propped on a nearby tree.
Crowley said he wasn't aware of any law saying you can't hang a sign on a tree (there isn't one). He refused to take it down. The staffers called their boss, Jeremy Reynolds, supervisor of security for Seattle Center. Reynolds removed the sign from the tree, and Crowley ripped it out of his hands. According to the police report, Crowley's "eyes were bugging and his whole body was shaking." SPD officer J. Patchen had to step in between the two men.
Patchen banned Crowley from Seattle Center under a "trespass admonishment" policy that the SPD uses there. The cops say it's the same process they follow in other private spaces, like when someone is busted for shoplifting at QFC. The problem is that Seattle Center is city property, supported by $33 million in tax dollars. That means the government has banished a citizen from public property for the crime of political speech. Try explaining that one to a federal judge.