Seattle police released a video on Saturday they said shows a “violent crowd” of activists preventing them from safely entering CHOP, or the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, to respond to a deadly shooting there overnight.
In the footage, activists can be seen threatening and physically confronting the responding police officers, screaming at them to leave and chanting “Black Lives Matter.”
A cop with a bullhorn pleads with the crowd to allow the police access to the victims of the shooting.
- “All we’re trying to do is get to the victim and provide them aid,” he says.
A Facebook Live video from early Saturday morning appears to show dozens of activists swarming the officers and chanting the BLM slogan “Hands up, don’t shoot.”
- Some of the activists are armed with AR-style rifles and handguns.
- A group later follows the officers as they leave the police-free CHOP, shouting and hitting the patrol cars.
The Seattle Fire Department said in a statement on Sunday that the situation had been “too high risk to commit our crews to respond in without a police escort.”
- A video posted to Twitter on Saturday evening by rapper turned CHOP vigitalte Raz Simone appears to show emergency vehicles sitting on the edge of the zone.
Two males with gunshot wounds were privately transported to Harborview Medical Center for treatment, police said.
- One victim was identified by his family as Lorenzo Anderson, a 19-year-old aspiring rapper, who was black.
- The other has yet to be publicly named, but the hospital said he was a 33-year-old male in critical condition.
Another shooting took place in CHOP on Sunday, reportedly of a 17-year-old boy.
Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office said in a statement on Sunday the city would work with protesters, “Black-led community organizations” and local businesses to “create a Capitol Hill environment that allows for peaceful demonstrations at Cal Anderson, quality of life for residents, and take concrete steps towards a new vision for policing in our City.”
“It is premature to determine or speculate about the cause of the shooting, or the perpetrators, including whether it was connected or related to any of the protests occurring on Capitol Hill,” the statement said.
Police Chief Carmen Best has warned that police are unable to effectively police CHOP.
- “Emergency calls, which often means somebody’s being assaulted, sometimes it’s a rape, sometimes it’s a robbery, but something bad is happening if it’s a top priority call, and we’re not able to get there,” she said on June 11.
A number of other violent incidents have been reported in the zone, including a sexual assault and an attempted arson.
How this happened: Protesters “liberated” CHOP, formerly known as CHAZ, or the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” on June 8 after Seattle police abandoned the East Precinct in an attempt to de-escalate street clashes with them amid anti-racism protests spurred by the death of George Floyd.
- Police have agreed not to respond to calls from within the six-block zone unless they are life-threatening.
Some cities have begun moving forward with plans to “abolish” or “defund” the police.
- But evidence suggests increasing the number of cops and their funding improves the quality of policing.
- “De-escalation” and “violence interruption,” two popular law-enforcement alternatives, have not proved up to the task.
President Donald Trump’s June 16 executive order on police reform offers additional funding to police departments that prove they abide by federal police training guidelines.
