It's hard to know the real story. So much is propaganda on both sides.
Clearly the cops knew this was coming and were able to evacuate all their essential things.
It was a planned evacuation. It sure seems they could have planned something better.
The media have created a catch-22 for the government.
Really more like, "Damned if ya do and damned if ya don't."
The administration can't move successfully, as they are in a media-created vise.
This is where direct action is not the way to show how smart we are.
If the cops had rushed in from all over on the first night and arrested as many as possible, it wouldn't be over, because everyone would know the administration didn't stop for one single second to consider things, and just took the Chinese solution. Mow the protesters down, arrest the survivors, run off the rest. It's Seattle, and once protesters were pushed a few blocks to the edge of the sea, they'd be fish in a barrel.
Every news agency in the world would start to create more riots, by showing the mass police action against a scared crowd of crying, teargassed idiots. You'd never see the cops at the spearhead getting shot and pummeled. They would die unnamed, and the left would have a crop of new martyrs.
This demands lateral action, and the perps are already thinking that way from day 1.
They hold hostage anyone who doesn't support them. They have a thousand eyes. They have a few guns and a few leaders with a strong-arm squad. They have limited access on the streets, but Seattle has lots of crazy sub-basements and substructures as the city has been raised over itself, for century and more. The border is totally porous from both directions. It's hard to stop smuggling and border-jumping either way.
Those are the things we have to attack them with as well.
Eyes:
Blind them with a DOS attack on the local systems. Send them millions of robomessages from fake people promising food and support until it just locks up . . .Flood it from our side, so they can't know what's up.
Ears:
Infiltrate so we do know something of what's up.
Figure out who, what and where, then think about surgical operations and side distractions.
The substructure:
Make it unbreathable there. Gas the substructure with something so stinky rats run from it.
The Hostages:
Oh My God. Here we can probably do little but trust in God.
Somebody will suffer at the hands of criminals. It's happening already.
Distract them from hostage taking somehow.
The Prestige:
Or the prestidigitation if you will . . . we perform a trick.
I don't know what. It's gotta be good.
Maybe many supplies show up suddenly, after system crashing messages of promise, on top of days of short rations and short tempers. Maybe most of the protesters are gathering the goods in one location, or strategic ones, and the henhouse is open?
Send a bit of food and drink covering mainly things like bandages and blankets, to waste time.
Discovering the small quantity of food actually there, more time is wasted as they rip open everything looking for more, and fighting over what has already been found.
Throw in things to make them further distracted.
Fake them out.