Tacoma council candidate Tom McCarthy says run-ins don’t color view of police

Though a newcomer to city politics, Tacoma City Council candidate Tom McCarthy is not new to uniting people under a common cause.

Starting in the mid-2000s, he led a number demonstrations against military action in the Middle East, “job-killing” free-trade agreements and federal immigration policy.

His actions during protests in the Puget Sound area sometimes landed him in jail. Charges against him were eventually dropped.

His run-ins with police also led him to file three claims for damages with various governing bodies asking for millions of dollars for alleged police abuses ranging from violating constitutional rights to excessive force.

Six years ago, he and other protesters, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, sued the city he now hopes to help lead. They lost the lawsuit, which alleged constitutional rights violations, in 2013.

McCarthy faces Keith Blocker in the November contest for the District 3 council seat, which is being vacated by term-limited Lauren Walker. The district includes the Hilltop, the Tacoma Mall area and Central Tacoma.

LAWSUIT AGAINST TACOMA FOLLOWS PORT PROTEST

The protests McCarthy led made headlines around the South Sound in March 2007 when people gathered at the Port of Tacoma to protest military shipments to the Middle East. Officers worried a protester would use a backpack to carry chains to lock protestors together, or to smuggle in weapons. McCarthy and several others were arrested after not following police instructions to remove backpacks if they wanted to walk beyond a checkpoint.

After a two-day jail stay, McCarthy filed a claim against the city of Tacoma — a precursor to a lawsuit — for $2 million. The claim says McCarthy carried a “legal backpack” full of food and medical supplies.

“I was in jail for two days and denied my First and Fourth Amendment Constitutional rights. I lost hours of time in which I would have been working,” wrote McCarthy, who is a part-time teacher at Pierce College.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit in 2009 on behalf of six protestors, including McCarthy. The ACLU lost the civil case in 2013 after a jury of eight people sided with the city. The court also ordered the ACLU to pay Tacoma $24,506, roughly a quarter of the city’s cost to defend itself.

The lengthy case and 10-day civil trial cost the city $103,042 to pay for things like expert testimony, witness preparation and office supplies related to the case. City Attorney Elizabeth Pauli said that amount does not include staff time, which the city does not track unless there is a chance of recouping the cost.

The expense to the city doesn’t bother McCarthy. Even though a jury found the city did nothing wrong, he still believes the city violated his constitutional rights and should pay the price.

“Freedom isn’t free. It wasn’t free for me and unfortunately it wasn’t free for the city of Tacoma, either,” he said recently, citing unspecified costs he paid to defend against criminal charges for carrying a backpack at the port protest that were eventually dropped.

He and other plaintiffs appealed the case and told the city he would settle the case for $100,000, which the City Council voted against in a public meeting.

Councilman Marty Campbell said in this, as with other settlement offers, the council weighs the chances of winning or losing the case against the cost to settle the case.

In late 2013, a few months after the Tacoma City Council voted against a settlement, McCarthy was proclaimed a Human Rights Champion by the Human Rights Commission, a group of Tacoma residents appointed by the council. The award lauds his commitment to peace in Tacoma and Pierce County by “organizing peace marches, demonstrating against the U.S. involvement in Iraq, and supporting due process and legal representation for undocumented detainees at the private facility located in the Tacoma Tideflats.”

Mayor Marilyn Strickland said she signed the award as she always does because she trusts the commission’s judgment.

“They will bring forward a name and they vetted it,” Strickland said. “I respect that they put a lot of time into it.”

In late 2007, McCarthy was booked into and released from the Pierce County Jail for violating the city’s noise ordinance during a march in downtown Tacoma against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Tacoma police spokeswoman Loretta Cool said. Cool said he was chanting “ICE ICE, break it down” into a megaphone. McCarthy did not appear to file a claim in that case.

Two other claims, filed in 2010 with the Washington State Patrol and with Pierce County, show McCarthy asked for more than $1 million from each agency for a 2008 arrest near Fort Lewis. A Washington State Patrol officer arrested him for investigation of obstructing a law enforcement officer and littering — the latter for unloading items from his vehicle and throwing them over a railing toward protesters. The items included protest banners and a plaster head of former President George W. Bush.

His claims against the two agencies allege false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, defamation and violation of his First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

Neither Pierce County nor Washington State Patrol have a record of having paid McCarthy as a result of the claims, agency spokesmen said. McCarthy said he never received money from the agencies.

POLICE RELATIONS IF ELECTED

McCarthy has focused his activism lately on organizing neighborhood events such as the Hilltop Street Fair. Despite his protest history and brushes with police, McCarthy said he would have a good relationship with law enforcement if he is elected.

He said his eight years as a block watch captain in his Hilltop neighborhood shows he can work with police.

“I work with police all the time. I love cops. I’ve worked with cops quite a lot, and I relate to them because it’s kind of a similar ethos as the military,” said McCarthy, who said his father served during the Vietnam War.

As a Tacoma councilman, he would push for one voluntary reform: encouraging more officers to live within the Tacoma city limits. Currently fewer than one in five of Tacoma’s 303 commissioned officers lives in the Tacoma city limits, according to the Tacoma Police Department. That’s a concern, McCarthy said.

“I think it’s important because it creates more opportunities for police to be involved in the day-to-day life of our city,” McCarthy said. “For those willing to take on that challenge, it could help our community.”

He called his plan to move officers into the city “voluntary and incentive-driven” but could not cite specifics about how to do it. Tacoma Police Union President Sgt. Jim Barrett said union members voted to stay neutral in the District 3 race. McCarthy’s civil case against the city initially included several Tacoma police officers as defendants, including Barrett and Police Chief Don Ramsdell.

The union has endorsed candidates in both other Tacoma council seats up for election: Incumbent Anders Ibsen and Conor McCarthy, who is not related to Tom McCarthy and is vying for a seat being vacated by Councilman David Boe.

Blocker, Tom McCarthy’s opponent in the City Council race, said he is not concerned with McCarthy’s protest history.

“That’s between Mr. McCarthy and the voters to decide on how big of a deal that is to them,” Blocker said.

This story was originally published September 21, 2015 at 1:31 PM with the headline "Tacoma council candidate Tom McCarthy says run-ins don’t color view of police."