People walk around the newly created Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle on June 11, 2020.
Photo:
jason redmond/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Residents and businesses were victims of the riots that broke out in 2020 after
George Floyd’s
murder. On Friday Seattle settled for $3.65 million with locals who sued after the police abandoned the city’s East Precinct to mayhem.
The notorious Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, really an urban anarchy zone, operated from June 8 to July 1, 2020. Then-Mayor
Jenny Durkan
called it a “summer of love,” and last week the Seattle Times still insisted it was “mostly peaceful.” Yet the occupiers declared a no-cop zone, and Seattle restored control only after two murders and multiple shootings.
In a federal lawsuit filed in June 2020, businesses, property owners and residents described how they were subjected to “extensive property damage, public safety dangers, and an inability to use and access their properties” after Seattle chose “to actively endorse, enable and participate in the occupation.” The city made no admission of wrongdoing in Friday’s settlement, but its failure to maintain order clearly led to havoc.
Car Tender, an automotive repair business that is among the plaintiffs, described how an intruder doused its premises with hand sanitizer and lit a fire. The owner repeatedly called 911, but ”police never responded to the scene that night,” the lawsuit says.
The intruder allegedly tried to stab the owner’s son with a spike and slash his femoral artery with a knife. The owner and his son managed to subdue the man, but a mob of some 500 forced them to release him.
The occupiers also told property owners that “if they dared to paint over graffiti, their buildings would be more severely vandalized or even burned to the ground,” the complaint says. It describes how “violence, vandalism, excessive noise, public drug use, and other crimes were rampant” within the public park at the occupied zone’s epicenter.
Evidence that would show to what extent city officials enabled the mayhem has disappeared under questionable circumstances. In an order last month, federal Judge Thomas Zilly excoriated Ms. Durkan, former Seattle police chief
Carmen Best,
fire chief
Harold Scoggins
and others for having “deleted thousands of text messages” during the relevant period “from their City-owned phones in complete disregard of their legal obligation to preserve relevant evidence.”
Judge Zilly also said the court would “instruct the jury that it may presume that the City officials’ text messages (deleted after Plaintiffs commenced this action) were unfavorable to the City.” The settlement includes $600,000 in penalties for the deleted evidence.
June 2020 began Seattle’s descent into disorder, and there’s no end in sight. The Seattle Police Department released its annual report this month, and it shows that “the violent crime rate reached a 15-year high in 2022.” Seattle recorded 52 homicides last year, a 40.5% increase over 2019. Shootings and shots-fired incidents reached an all-time high.
Friday’s settlement offers some relief for some residents and businesses harmed by Seattle’s dereliction in 2020. But the costs from the summer of lawlessness continue to mount.
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