Seattle’s CHOP zone saw 525% rise in crime, two shootings and violent robberies before being crushed
SEATTLE’S Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) zone saw a 525 percent surge in crime, two fatal shootings and robberies before police moved in and crushed protest camps.
Mayor Jenny Durkan threatened to end the six-block cop-free zone for over a week and eventually issued an executive order to boot demonstrators from it.
The emergency order, which took effect early on Wednesday morning, directed all residents to vacate the area.
At least 31 people were arrested for “failure to disperse, obstruction, assault, and unlawful weapon possession, police said.
The order stated that the Seattle Police Department received various reports of “narcotics use and violent crime, including rape, robbery, assault, and increased gang activity” within CHOP.
From June 2 to June 30, there was also a staggering 525 percent increase in violent crime compared to the same period last year.
This includes “22 additional incidents, in person-related crime in the area, to include two additional homicides, 6 additional robberies, and 16 additional aggravated assaults (to include 2 additional non-fatal shootings).”
A pervasive presence of firearms and other weapons has also been “well-documented”, according to the executive order.
There are two fatal shootings on June 20 and June 29, which resulted in the death of two African American teens.
Seattle Police chief Carmen Best derided CHOP as “lawless and brutal”
In the first shooting, teenage rapper Lorenzo Anderson, 19, was fatally shot – but cops and firefighters were blocked from helping him by angry crowds.
During an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, his father, Horace Lorenzo Anderson was asking for answers.
“It’s been almost two weeks and I haven’t heard from nobody.”
“They wouldn’t even let me see my son that night, it took a whole week before I saw my son I went to the hospital and they said we wouldn’t see him.”
Anderson then broke down in tears and begged: “Somebody need to come tell me something, cos I still don’t know nothing and somebody needs to come to my door and tell me something.
“All I know is my son got killed up here… that’s my son.”
On Monday, 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. was fatally shot inside CHOP and a boy, 14, was left in critical condition from the shooting.
A friend claimed that Mays Jr had hijacked a Jeep and drove with his friend into the zone “for safety.”
Ciara Walker, 25, told the Daily Mail that she was on the phone with the boys when the incident occurred: “The last thing I heard was a crash and pop pop pop, I’m not sure who said what, but one of them said, ‘Ah s**t I’m hit, I don’t wanna die.’ Then the phone went dead.”
Mayor Durkan also mentioned that conditions in the CHOP and lack of social distancing rules put in place to ward off COVID-19 could contribute to the rise in the numbers of cases across the region.
Following the news that area had been cleared out, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany called it a “failed four-week Democrat experiment.”
She celebrated while telling reporters at a press conference: “We are pleased to report law and order has prevailed and Seattle has been liberated from the anarchists.”
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However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell believes that the moves were “several deaths too late.”
Reacting to the news on Twitter, McConnell wrote: “Finally. Twenty-some days and several deaths too late.
CHOP was originally called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or CHAZ by protesters until it was changed.
Protesters took over the area on June 8 after cops abandoned the East Precinct building and a Black Lives Matter mural was painted on the street.