From June 1st to 8th, a large number of protestors clashed with police in order to gain control of Seattle’s East Precinct. After about a week of protests and riots, police abandoned the precinct in order to de-escalate the situation. Protestors then occupied the precinct, and set up borders surrounding 6 blocks in the neighborhood of Capitol Hill. The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone was born.
During it’s pathetic around 22-day existence, it technically reached a murder rate of 1,216 per 100,000, making it the most murderous “nation” ever, beating countries like Venezuela. This could be attributed to the fact that there were no police, or at least no official police. On the topic of police, they likely certainly had the worst police ever. They killed an unarmed black teenager! An unarmed! Black! Teenager!
The story is that some guy driving a silver SUV did a drive-by shooting in or around CHAZ, injuring a bystander. A white jeep was mistaken for the suspect, and the driver was shot dead by CHAZ security. In a possibly (I’m not sure) unrelated shooting, CHAZ police again shot some driver. One of them shouted, “Oh, you’re not dead, huh?” and shot the guy again. CHAZ police were easily the worst police ever.
Raz Simone, a well known rapper in the Capitol Hill area, became one of, if not the, unofficial leader(s) of CHAZ- unofficial because there was never an official leader of CHAZ (anarchy). He was also recorded handing out guns to a man without an I.D or proof of his age. When confronted, he denied those allegations.
CHAZ had border walls, reports of armed border police, and of course, armed normal police officers: all things that CHAZians wanted to defund or thought were racist. Apparently, after yet another shooting in CHAZ, when law enforcement tried to take care of the victim, CHAZians prevented them from entering the territory. When the shooting victim tragically bled to death, CHAZians were mad that law enforcement didn’t get to the victim somehow. And when CHAZ police couldn’t get to problems within CHAZ, people did- there was a case of someone being exiled- literally- from CHAZ (reason unknown to me) and another case of a suspected thief being beat up (I’m unsure whether he was an actual thief). Looting and wrecking stores was apparently okay in CHAZ, as it occurred a lot without consequence.
Also, a black-only garden and a black-only “safe space” was established in CHAZ (segregation?).
Luckily, to prevent any more inevitable deaths from occurring, CHAZ was reclaimed by Seattle police on July 1st, only after protesters showed up near Mayor Durkan’s house in Seattle and vaguely threatened her or something. But it’s legacy will live on- and it’s legacy will be a negative one.