Seattle Settles for $3.65M After Summer of Riots
The City of Seattle recently reached a settlement after being sued by residents who felt abandoned by the police during riots in the summer of 2020, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In the wake of George Floyd’s death in 2020, protests and riots sprang up around the nation, though few were as long and violent as Seattle’s. Protesters there declared a “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” or CHAZ, and erected barricades to mark its borders.
City officials allowed them to do this and even encouraged their efforts.
Plaintiffs in the suit described “extensive property damage, public safety dangers, and an inability to use and access their properties,” and detailed various crimes and mischief, including “violence, vandalism, excessive noise, public drug use, and other crimes,” The Journal reported.
One business owner inside the abandoned East Precinct area alleged that protestors doused his building with hand sanitizer and lit it on fire, and attacked his son with a spike, slashing his femoral artery. Police were called, but allegedly never responded to the incident.
Police finally stepped in and ended the CHAZ after two murders and multiple shootings.
All of this occurred because, as the plaintiffs alleged, Seattle chose “to actively endorse, enable and participate in the occupation.” The City of Seattle reached a settlement, agreeing to pay out $3.65 million to affected residents, though the city never admitted wrongdoing.
To make matters worse, key local officials including then-Mayor Jenny Durkan, then-Police Chief Carmen Best, and Fire Chief Harold Scoggins were criticized by a federal judge for deleting relevant text messages from their city phones after learning of the lawsuit. The settlement includes $600,000 in fines for deleted evidence.
One of the most essential duties of government is keeping residents safe, and Seattle residents are paying twice for their government’s inability to perform that duty: once from the lawlessness the residents endured and again for the settlement for the city's incompetence.
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