The Seattle Street Samurai: The 11-Hour Sword Standoff

On April 3, 1997, downtown Seattle became the scene of one of the strangest police standoffs of the decade.

A man wearing military-style clothing and sunglasses stood in the middle of the city carrying a three-foot samurai-style sword. Police surrounded him and ordered him to surrender the weapon.

He refused.

What followed lasted nearly eleven hours, disrupted downtown Seattle and ended with police using a fire hose and a ladder to take him into custody.

Nobody died.

What Happened

The man was 41-year-old Tony Allison, also identified in contemporary reports as Anthony James Allison. He was known to some people by the name “Apollo.”

Shortly after 11 a.m., an officer spotted Allison carrying the sword in downtown Seattle. The confrontation eventually settled near the busy Second Avenue and Pike Street area, close to Pike Place Market.

Police closed streets around him and tried to convince him to surrender. Allison refused to put down the sword, and officers faced an uncomfortable problem.

They had an armed man standing in the middle of a major city.

But they also had time.

Eleven Hours

The standoff continued through the afternoon and into the night.

Police negotiators attempted to talk Allison into surrendering, but the effort went nowhere. Officers then began trying different methods to make it impossible or uncomfortable for him to remain where he was.

They fired nonlethal projectiles, including rubber, wooden and bean-bag-style rounds. Pepper spray and another chemical irritant were used. Officers soaked him with water and reportedly aimed electric fans at him in an attempt to make him cold enough to give up.

He kept holding onto the sword.

By evening, what had started as a police call had turned into a major public spectacle. Hundreds of people watched while television cameras documented the scene.

Meanwhile, downtown traffic was becoming a mess.

A City Block Shuts Down

Police evacuated a busy downtown block and closed businesses surrounding the confrontation.

Some business owners were furious.

The shutdown lasted through much of the workday, interfering with traffic, customers and employees. Afterward, one restaurant owner estimated that he had lost more than $1,000 and complained that police had turned what he considered a manageable incident into an international spectacle.

The story really had traveled.

One business owner later said people had called him from Greece after seeing the confrontation on CNN.

Seattle had managed to create international news with one man and one sword.

Why Didn’t Police Shoot Him?

That became one of the biggest questions after the incident.

Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper acknowledged that officers may have reached points during the confrontation when deadly force could legally have been justified.

But the department chose not to take that route.

Stamper’s explanation was simple: the job of police was to preserve life.

The decision frustrated people who believed officers should have ended the confrontation much sooner. Others praised the department for spending eleven hours trying to take an armed and mentally ill man into custody without killing him.

The outcome became the department’s strongest argument.

Allison was still alive.

The Final Attempt

Shortly after 10 p.m., police finally made their move.

A high-pressure fire hose knocked Allison to the pavement. Officers then used a ladder to pin him down while they moved in and wrestled the sword away.

After nearly eleven hours, the standoff was over.

Allison was taken to Harborview Medical Center and treated for bruises.

No police officer was injured.

No bystander was injured.

And Allison survived.

Who Was Tony Allison?

Contemporary reports described Allison as homeless and as someone who had previously spent about ten years at Western State Hospital.

Family members told reporters that he had serious mental-health problems and had been released from the institution the previous year. Police Chief Norm Stamper said after the standoff that Allison appeared unlikely to be considered competent to stand trial and might instead return to mental-health treatment.

That background changes the way the incident looks.

It is easy to watch footage of a man standing in the street with a samurai sword and turn the event into a bizarre piece of 1990s pop culture.

But police were dealing with a real person apparently experiencing a serious mental-health crisis while holding a weapon capable of killing someone.

That made every decision more complicated.

The Police Gamble

Waiting eleven hours carried its own risks.

Every additional minute created another opportunity for Allison to charge an officer, move toward a bystander or force police into using deadly force. The shutdown also created growing pressure from businesses and commuters who wanted the incident finished.

Police nevertheless continued trying nonlethal methods.

Their strategy was criticized at the time for being too slow and overly cautious.

But it worked.

The armed man went to a hospital instead of a morgue.

Why It Matters

The Seattle sword standoff is memorable because the situation sounds almost ridiculous when reduced to a headline.

One man with a sword shut down part of a major American city for eleven hours.

But underneath the strange imagery was a difficult question about policing.

How long should officers wait when someone is armed and dangerous but not actively attacking anyone?

A faster response could have reopened the streets hours earlier.

It also could have ended with someone dead.

Seattle chose patience.

For eleven hours, that decision looked excessive to some of the people watching.

When the night ended without a death, it looked very different.

T Funk Take

There is something about this story that feels completely 1990s.

A guy named Apollo is standing in downtown Seattle wearing military clothes and sunglasses with a three-foot samurai sword while the entire city slowly grinds to a halt around him.

Then the police start trying everything.

Projectiles don’t work. Pepper spray doesn’t work. Water doesn’t work. Fans don’t work. Negotiators don’t work. Eleven hours later, somebody finally figures out that the answer is apparently a bigger fire hose and a ladder.

It’s absurd when you describe it that way.

But I think the important part of the story is that nobody died.

It would have been very easy for police to decide that an armed man refusing orders had created enough of a threat to justify shooting him. Instead, they spent almost the entire day looking for another way.

I’m sure that wasn’t very comforting if your business was shut down or your car was stuck somewhere inside the police perimeter. Eleven hours is an incredibly long time to let one guy with a sword control a piece of downtown Seattle.

But there is a pretty strong response to that criticism.

He went to the hospital.

Not the morgue.

It’s also hard to look at the story now without seeing somebody who was clearly in crisis. That doesn’t make the sword less dangerous, but it does make the patience shown by police a lot more interesting than the ridiculous headline.

Still, surviving rubber rounds, chemical spray, cold water and hours of police trying to wear you down before finally getting pinned to the pavement with a ladder is one hell of a way to become part of Seattle history.

Case closed in the T Funk Era archive.