Seattle police clear protesters’ ‘autonomous zone’

Social experiment turned to lawlessness after fatal shootings

SEATTLE— After days of clashes with demonstrators outside a police station on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, police had given up the building, leaving the protesters to establish their own autonomous zone in the middle of the city.

But the emergent experiment in police-free living turned into an area of increasing lawlessness, with two people killed in four shootings, and a liberal city government that had been inclined to let the protesters have their say increasingly found itself facing pressure to clear them away.

Early Wednesday morning, police officers in riot gear swiftly moved in to drive the protesters off the streets and bulldoze their barricades, ending one of the most visible protests that broke out across the country in response to the death of George Floyd in the custody of the Minneapolis police more than a month ago.

“Our job is to protect and to serve the community,” Carmen Best, the city’s police chief, said as police officers re-entered the East Precinct police station and took 31 people into custody “Our job is to support peaceful demonstrations.”

“What has happened here on these streets over the last two weeks — few weeks, that is — is lawless, and it’s brutal, and bottom line, it is simply unacceptable,” she said. At a news conference on Wednesday, Mayor Jenny Durkan said the city had been forced to act because of the repeated episodes of violence. The encampment known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest began drawing homeless people from elsewhere in the city who showed no inclination to leave anytime soon, and the happy communal vibe during the day was often turning darker at night.

The outbreak of violence over the past week left many in the neighbourhood — an area of artists and students and some of the city’s grandest homes — demanding an end to the chaos.