Businesses sue Seattle over ‘occupied’ protest zone
By: Gene Johnson | AP
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
SEATTLE — A collection of Seattle businesses, property owners and residents sued the city Wednesday over its tolerance of an “occupied” protest zone, saying officials have been complicit in depriving them of their rights to their property.
“Rather, this lawsuit is about the constitutional and other legal rights of plaintiffs — businesses, employees, and residents in and around CHOP — which have been overrun by the city of Seattle’s unprecedented decision to abandon and close off an entire city neighborhood, leaving it unchecked by the police, unserved by fire and emergency health services, and inaccessible to the public at large,” the lawsuit said.
The Seattle City Attorney’s Office said it had not yet seen the lawsuit but would review it.
The “occupation” began June 8 when the Seattle Police Department, following days of intense clashes with demonstrators in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, abandoned its East Precinct building in the densely populated Capitol Hill neighborhood. Protesters moved police barricades to block traffic, and scores camped in a nearby park.
The protest has drawn the scorn of President Donald Trump, who asserted it was being run by anarchists.
A festive atmosphere has prevailed for much of the time since then, with participants painting a large Black Lives Matter mural on the street and volunteers handing out free food. But openly armed “sentinels” have also kept watch, and the atmosphere has sometimes been more menacing at night. Police said typical response times to emergency calls in the area, which stretched several blocks, had tripled.
Mayor Jenny Durkan has expressed support for the protest, calling it “a peaceful expression of our community’s collective grief and their desire to build a better world,” and the city has helped it by providing different barricades to better protect participants from vehicles.
But following three shootings in the area on consecutive nights beginning last weekend, Durkan said this week the city would wind down the protest zone, at first by encouraging demonstrators to leave voluntarily, and that police would return to the precinct. But neither she nor Police Chief Carmen Best gave a specific timeline for when that would happen.
Patty Eakes, an attorney for the plaintiffs, separately told Durkan in a letter Wednesday that she wanted the mayor’s office to provide a timeline by Friday for clearing out the protest and returning police, or the plaintiffs would ask the court for an immediate order that full public access be restored.
“City leadership have been on the ground daily having discussions with demonstrators, residents and businesses and trusted community-based, Black-led organizations to determine a path forward that protects the right to peacefully protest and keeps people safe,” the mayor’s office said in a written statement.
In the class-action lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, about a dozen businesses, residents and property owners said they had sometimes been threatened for photographing protesters in public areas or for cleaning graffiti off their storefronts. The owner of the auto shop Car Tender said a burglar broke in the night of June 14, started a fire using hand sanitizer as an accelerant, and then attacked his son with a knife when confronted.
The owner and his son managed to put out the fire and detain the burglar, the complaint said, but police never responded to their 911 calls. A large crowd of “CHOP participants” then came to the scene and forced the owner to release the arsonist, it said.
Other businesses, including the family-run label manufacturing company Richmark Label, said they had been unable to send or receive packages because delivery companies won’t go near the protest zone or because access to their loading dock had been blocked by barricades.
Magdalena Sky, the proprietor of Tattoos and Fortune, said in the complaint she is a supporter of Black Lives Matter but that her business was down severely due to the protest. A physical therapist and wine shop also said clients or customers had been afraid to enter the area.
The complaint said that the city’s decision to turn over the blocks and a nearby park to the demonstrators deprived them of their property rights without due process and amounted to an illegal gift of public property to the protesters.
The plaintiffs are seeking damages for lost business, property damage and deprivation of their property rights as well as the restoration of full public access.
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Now they are going to sue? They voted for this mayor:
'Oh shut up silly woman, said the reptile with a grin. 'You knew damn well I was a snake before you let me in.'.
Even in Cities and States that consistently vote one way or the other the electorate is split. In this case Mayor Jenny Durkan got 56.53% of the vote. So that leaves 43.47% who didn't vote for her and probably hate her and they are more likely to be business and property owners.
The 2017 Seattle mayoral election was held on November 7, 2017. It was won by former U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan , who beat civic activist Cary Moon in the general election by 15 percentage points. The two candidates had advanced from an earlier primary election held in August, which ensured that Seattle would have its first female mayor since Bertha Knight Landes was elected in 1926. [1] Municipal elections are officially nonpartisan though most candidates have declared party affiliations.
Then-incumbent mayor Ed Murray initially sought re-election, but ended his campaign amid allegations of sexual abuse which led to his resignation in September 2017. [2] [3] In the top-two primary , leading candidates had included current and former officeholders Durkan, former State Representative Jessyn Farrell , former Mayor Mike McGinn , and State Senator Bob Hasegawa , all Democrats , and activists Nikkita Oliver and Moon. Fifteen lesser-known candidates were also on the primary ballot. [4] [5]
Durkan had a large lead over Moon after the preliminary general election ballot count on November 7, and Moon conceded the next day. [6] Durkan officially took office on November 28, after the results were certified, replacing interim mayor Tim Burgess .
Different candidates but all cut from the same rotten cloth.
PS progressive Seattle only has mail in voting. The results speak for themselves!
Back in a few
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Well, their summer of love lasted a whole 16 days. That's a damn short summer.
Now they'll have years of litigation. Hope their fruity little demonstration was worth it.
This should be a very interesting lawsuit. The Mayor and Governor were criminally negligent, in my opinion. They actually supported the lawlessness. Trump may not be the nicest President we've ever had, but how on Earth can anyone vote for such Democratic idiocy? Countless people on the left try to convince the right that voting for Trump would just be immoral but then continue to praise all the lawlessness currently gripping our country.
I was probably not going to vote in this year's presidential election because I find both candidates hard to stomach, but the left, and their Democratic supporters are really starting to scare the hell out of me. I've never seen such mass insanity so bent on taking away our freedoms in order to force the politically correct cause du jour of any given moment. If the Dem's get all three branches, I seriously think we're doomed.
I'm hoping this lawsuit may be a sanity check. That people will wake up and see what's in store for us if the Dem's take over. And, I hope Seattle gets taken to the cleaners over this.