Seattle activist pepper-sprayed while talking on phone sues city and police

A Seattle high school history teacher who was pepper-sprayed by police as he walked home from a Black Lives Matter rally on the Martin Luther King holiday is suing the city and the police for $500,000.

Newly released video shows the moment Jesse Hagopian, a popular city activist who had earlier addressed the rally, was sprayed directly in the face by a white female police officer as he talks on his mobile phone and appears to be be walking away from the police line.

Hagopian’s lawyer, James Bible, said the use of force was unprovoked.

“His eyes were burning, his nostrils were inflamed, his ear was burning,” Bible told the Guardian, adding that Hagopian had been on the phone to his mother at the time the incident occurred. Hagopian had planned on returning home to celebrate the second birthday of his child.

“He spent the rest of his day washing his eyes out with milk and trying to get better,” Bible added.

Immediately after the incident on 19 January, Hagopian posted an image on Twitter showing inflammation all over his face, with the caption: “Wish we had a better world!”

“Thankfully, someone caught it on video and now everyone can see what happened,” Hagopian wrote in a post on Facebook when the footage surfaced late on Wednesday.

A spokesman for Seattle police department (SPD) told the Guardian that the force would not comment on the matter due to ongoing litigation.

“We wouldn’t anticipate that there would be an apology in this case. Frankly the Seattle police department has a long history of violating civil rights,” said Bible, the attorney for Hagopian.

In 2011 the SPD was investigated by the US department of justice (DOJ), which found the force “engaged in a pattern of excessive force that violates the constitution and federal law” and raised “serious concerns” that some practices of the force “could result in discriminatory policing”.

In 2012 the SPD settled with the DOJ and signed a memorandum of understanding pledging to improve training and community outreach.

Bible said that information gathered about the pepper-spray incident would be sent on to federal authorities.