The Capital Hill area of Seattle which was occupied by protesters since early June has been retaken:
Seattle police, under orders from Mayor Jenny Durkan, cleared demonstrators out of the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest Zone (CHOP) on Wednesday, after a series of shootings marred the ongoing protest movement.
City officers on bikes and in riot gear — with help from FBI agents and police from nearby Bellevue — began dispersing the crowd at about 5 a.m., authorities said.
Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best reiterated her support for the Black Lives Matter movement, which drove the protests, but said of the weekslong occupation of public streets: “Enough is enough.”
“I support peaceful demonstrations. Black lives matter and I too want to help propel this movement forward toward meaningful exchange in our community and meaningful change in our community,” Best told reporters. “But enough is enough. Our job is to protect and to serve the community.”
None of the reports I have been able to find have been negative. They have been surprisingly, to me, factual. Here is another example:
Police in Seattle have cleared out the city’s ‘autonomous zone’ and arrested over 30 protesters following an executive order from Mayor Jenny Durkan. ABC News reports that the “occupied” zone, which has been dubbed the Capitol Hill Organized Protest area, was cleared by police on Wednesday. The order from Durkan came after four shootings, two of which were fatal, occured in the area within the last month.
“Due to ongoing violence and public safety issues in the East Precinct/Cal Anderson Park area, Mayor Jenny Durkan has issued an executive order to vacate the area,” the Seattle Police Department wrote on Twitter. “Seattle police will be in the area this morning enforcing the Mayor’s order.”
And from Capital Hill Seattle:
UPDATE 9:30 AM: SPD now reports 31 arrests for “failure to disperse, obstruction, assault, and unlawful weapon possession.”
There were no significant injuries reported. Around 6:30 AM, SPD said that a woman was reported going into labor on the east side of Cal Anderson Park.
UPDATE 11:21 AM: More arrests and a large police presence was reported at Broadway and Pine after a clash between officers and protesters. Nearby Seattle Central announced its campus was locked down during the ongoing police activity.
Police said officers “enforcing today’s order” were wearing “a higher-level of protective gear.”
“Police are utilizing this equipment because individuals associated w/the CHOP are known to be armed and dangerous/may be associated with shootings, homicides, robberies, assaults & other violent crimes,” the update read.
SPD was also investigating reports of vehicles circling the area with officers reporting individuals “with firearms/armor” inside. The vehicles also did not have visible license plates, SPD reported.
The vandalism and mess are horrendous (from here):
From Joseph Suttner @josephsuttner:
I still think my original suggestion that letting them take over for a while was the correct decision. They didn’t disperse on their own like I thought they would. But digging in and getting into a violent confrontation on day one or even day five probably would leave us in a worse situation that what we have now.
The children demonstrated to the entire world and themselves they can’t get along without adult supervision. That lesson would not have been learned had the police gone in and immediately “kicked ass”. To the best of my knowledge there were no serious injuries during the retaking of the area. The videos I watched showed people passively resisting arrest but there weren’t any outbreaks of violence. Had the police gone in when emotions were high private citizens and police probably would have been injured and I can easily imagine there being tremendous property damage.
As I read somewhere a few days ago, paraphrasing, “This is your free sample of socialism.”
The only reason they got dispersed as because the mob took a walk over to the mayor’s gated neighborhood and danced around her personal house. Until then she didn’t give a flying f**k about who was getting dumped on
I think it was a little more complicated than that. But that probably did have an influence.
And once those people get out of jail, do you think she and her house will be safer than before she had them hauled off to jail?
Thanks to the Socialist party city council member, Mayor Jenny’s secret home address is now public knowledge amongst the rioter-American population. She’s going to have to move… or have very expensive 24/7 security… or have a come-to-Jesus moment regarding the fundamental limits of government capability and the purpose of the Second Amendment. Not holding my breath for the last one.
No problem with the security. There will always be enough police to protect politicians.
And the praetorian guard smiled and nodded his head. “Yes, of course we’ll protect you,” and said with a grin, while winking to the centurion across the hall. “Unto death.”
@rolf
Obviously, you still believe in justice.
Good points and as usual, a well reasoned argument.
The urge to send in a tactical force to “kick ass” and re-establish order IS sort of a knee jerk reaction to the disorder and chaos of the rioters.
I think we’ve all thought of events often having a pendulum kind of effect, with extremes and moderation as time passes. I’m waiting for the pendulum to swing back, while it seems to be continuing on further out of moderation as people are denounced, lives ruined, jobs lost and all in the name of “justice”.
We don’t have a choice, we’ll have to see where this goes…
Jeff B.
Waiting can be problematic, though. Even if it isn’t done for political reasons as seems to be the case here, it is a double edged sword. While it helps to show the world (the part that is amenable to reason) what’s wrong with the occupiers, it also victimizes the residents of the area. At the very least, they’ve lost weeks of business. Most likely they will have to bear the cost of cleanup and repair. They will probably get an increase on their insurance premiums, and possibly a reduction in customer traffic.
I agree. There was a somewhat heavy price paid learning this lesson. Also, not mentioned is that businesses are leaving Seattle. See my QOTD for tomorrow for an example.
But that price (on a nationwide scale, not locally) may be recouped by swifter action and support of the locals in other locations.
Not sure about the insurance. I’ve heard, but not verified, that insurance frequently doesn’t cover riots. Which, of course, means they pay the full price now instead of some of it spread out over the future.
I think we all already knew how bad these insurgents are after they burned down the first city center back east. Decades ago. How many “reminders” do you think America needs?
Hell then; let the criminals have the whole world! Then we’ll all be sufficiently “educated”!
Apparently that’s what’s going to happen. Anyway, it’s been prophesized, so talking or planning may not do anything whatsoever to stop it. But before it gets truly better it’ll get far worse than you currently imagine.
Who’s “we”? If anywhere near 90% of the population knew the police would have been told to bring out the M-240s and M-249s with bucket loaders and dump trucks to clean up the messes.
There are a lot of people that really believe the “protestors” are well intentioned and really just want “social justice” and some of them are willing to punch fascists and Nazis. “It’s technically illegal, but they have good intentions.”
Seeing the destruction makes it much harder to hold on to that delusion. Particularly if someone is rubbing their nose in the evidence. Without the evidence it becomes a matter of opinion, “This time it’s different.”
My knee-jerk sarcastic response is: “It’s tragic that the CHOP children had to gun down so many black men to teach us how evil the rest of us are. They sure showed us!”
I don’t know if the sarcasm center in my brain will survive the coming year.
Just start calling the required face-masks a “training burka.”
Or ask if it’s an N95, and if they say “yes,” ask them when they had it fitted and tested.
I’m with you – I can be as sarcastic as they come, but I might have to re-calibrate my sarcasm meter too. (and bite my tongue more than normal at work). Of course, if you want to re-calibrate your AR, MidwayUSA has a number of them, though only about a third of them are in-stock.
Spot on funny Rork! This has to end! ( your embarrassing yourselves and BLM in the process.)
If we had known when the mayor was going in,we could have shorted spray paint stocks!
Well then let’s allow any and all angry, violent children to take over absolutely everything then, so they can learn from it.
Nonsense! This goes entirely against your “chum in the water” post from just the other day.
And; since when is an executive order required to enforce long-standing laws? Do cops take an oath to uphold the law, but only when given specific executive orders to do so?
Also; this didn’t happen because of a few shootings and other violent crimes inside CHOP. It happened only after the insurgents decided to go to the mayor’s house to cause trouble.
And of course no one is talking about arresting the chief organizers and instigators, the famous, rich, life-long leftist agitators using these ignorant young people as their cannon fodder, so to speak. The organizers’ names seem not to come up in any of these media reports. Are we also waiting for them to “learn from their mistakes”? And after how many millions dead will we decide to stop them?
There is a big difference between what a government can and should do and what a private business can and should do. A government can change it’s “mind” and back up that decision with guns. Businesses cannot.
With the rise of the tech oligarchs, the line between government and business has become blurry. We ignore this at our peril.
Yeah, let them rape your wife just a little while till they figure out the error of their ways. Awful free handing out pain other people have to eat there, Joe.
Society has a duty to its members to stop injustice asap. Otherwise we all get to be judge, jury and executioner
I for one have no intention of standing by waiting for you to decide when my level of property or personal loss has become great enough to require action.
The analogy doesn’t extrapolate to the CHAZ/CHOP situation.
You would have a hard time finding one person out of 500 who would object to you using deadly force to stop an active rape. Seattle “progressives” and Marxists banned the use of tear gas and pepper spray by the police during the “protests” with the exception of the SWAT team and then only under very restrictive conditions.
The police would have been required to displace the “protestors” using shields, batons, and handcuffs with guns as an extreme last resort. The “protestors” had bricks, sticks, and Molotov cocktails. The claimed reason for the “protests” was excessive use of force by the police. If the police had hurt any of the “protestors” all the Marxists and probably 90% of the “progressives” would have claimed police brutality and raised a stink about it. And at the end of the scenario the case for “law and order” types would have been no better and perhaps weaker. The police would have been demoralized as well as defunded or disbanded.
Under the current situation the law and order case is strengthened in the minds of everyone except the Marxists. If NYC or Portland police clean out an infestation of the Marxist scum and a give them a nose full of pepper spray and crack a few skulls in the process a fair number of the “progressives” will be supportive and most of the rest will do little more than grumble to themselves.
Is my analysis faulty? Please explain out the situation could have resulted in a better outcome than it did with the reality of the mindset of the people who live in these areas.
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