Not in My Back Yard! -- Seattle Mayor Finally Acts After Protestors March on Her Home!

Bye-bye, CHOP

Editor's note: Well, well, well. When they marched on her house, the mayor decided maybe it wasn't such a "summer of love" after all. Progressives better get used to the fact that they are simply useful idiots to the Marxists. They use you and when they take over you're the first to be purged. Sounds like this was her "come to Jesus meeting." Let's hope some of these liberals wake up when they recognize they have reaped the wind and are themselves caught in the whirlwind! Note the internecine warfare between the mayor and the city councilwoman. May they eat each other up!

Seattle Police Dismantle ‘Police Free’ Zone

Updated July 1, 2020 1:23 pm ET The Wall Street Journal, at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/seattle-police-dismantle-police-free-zone-11593616694?mod=hp_lead_pos7

Development potentially ends a three-week stand-off between police and protesters who had declared the area a police-free zone.

Seattle police attempting to remove protesters in the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone early Wednesday, after the mayor issued an order that the area be cleared.

Seattle police are dismantling the self-styled Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, or CHOP, potentially ending a three-week standoff between police and protesters who had declared the area a police-free zone.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan issued an executive order early Wednesday morning for protesters to vacate the zone. Seattle police said on Twitter that so far there have been more than two dozen arrests in the zone for failure to disperse, obstruction, resisting arrest and assault. Police said one of those arrested, a 29-year-old man, was in possession of a large metal pipe and kitchen knife when he was taken into custody.

Ms. Durkan issued an emergency proclamation for the East Precinct and Cal Anderson Park area, calling the police-free zone an “unlawful assembly.”

The progressive mayor once predicted a “summer of love” in the zone. The mayor’s decision to retake the area could inform police defunding movements across the country as policy makers seek to quell tensions between police and protesters while continuing to protect everyday citizens.

In the executive order, the mayor said the city’s obligations under the First Amendment don’t require it to provide “limitless sanctuary to occupy city property, damage city and private property, obstruct the right of way or foster dangerous conditions.”

“This order, and our police response, comes after weeks of violence in and around the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone, including four shootings, resulting in multiple injuries and the deaths of two teenagers,” Chief of Police Carmen Best said in a statement.

The Seattle police chief said CHOP had become “lawless and brutal.”

Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best [Photo from Gary]

Besides the murders, Ms. Durkan said crime in general had soared inside the occupied zone. It encompassed six city blocks from the Cal Anderson sports park, where many protesters had camped, to the East Precinct police station, where they held nightly demonstrations, dance parties and sometimes street barbecues.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan issued an emergency proclamation for the East Precinct and Cal Anderson Park area, calling the police-free zone an ‘unlawful assembly.’

In all, major crimes so far this year jumped to 65 reported incidents in the CHOP census zone—most in the past month—from 37 for all of last year, according to a national database that Seattle police cited. Aggravated assaults soared to 11 this year from just two last year, while robberies grew to six from none.

The crime wave was aided, in large part, by the inability of police to access the area, say people who live and work there. In the early days of the occupation, workers apprehended a burglar with tools and cash in the Car Tender auto repair shop but a mob of demonstrators broke through a fence to free him after the business was unable to get police to respond, said co-owner John McDermott.

“We have felt abandoned by the City Council and the governor,” said Mr. McDermott, who estimates his shop’s revenues fell 40% as a result of customers being afraid to come in.

He is one of the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit filed against the city over the occupation on behalf of residents and businesses.

Some protesters agreed with the mayor that the occupation had gone too far. Bridgette Allen, a Black woman, said the message of the Black Lives Matter movement she has demonstrated for has gotten diluted as the occupation has dragged on.

“I think this [police retaking of the neighborhood] was the right thing to do,” said Ms. Allen, 58 years old, a community organizer. “I think the intentions were good from the original protest, but it took a different narrative.”

The mayor acted three days after Black Lives Matter protesters marched to her home to press their demands, which included defunding the Seattle Police Department. The action infuriated the mayor, who said in a statement her address was supposed to be kept confidential under a state protection program because of death threats she has received for her previous work as U.S. attorney in Seattle. She blamed Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, a self-described socialist, for orchestrating the march and asked the City Council to investigate her for any violations of office. Ms. Sawant in a statement accused the mayor of launching “a shameful attack” against her and grass-roots campaigns.