SEATTLE, WA – Another peaceful protest turns violent as gunfire rips through the ‘CHOP’ zone outside of Capitol Hill in Seattle, Washington – and his family is demanding answer.
Horace Lorenzo Anderson, who goes by Lorenzo, a 19-year old black man, died from multiple gun shots.
Seattle Police, in a post Saturday on its blotter, said that they attempted to respond to a report of shots fired at Cal Anderson Park, which is inside the CHOP zone, but officers were, “met by a violent crowd that prevented safe access to the victims”.
They later found out that Lorenzo was transported to Harborview Medical Center by CHOP medics, which are volunteers.
Ambulances never made it to the scene where Lorenzo was shot.
In response to the police saying they were unable to access the victims, a representative from CHOP said, “no one within the CHOP denied entry to PD within any organizational capacity. Officers deciding on their own not to enter an area is not the same thing as being denied entry”.
In a different statement released to the media Saturday night, a representative from CHOP also said that, “the individuals involved in the shooting may have had previous history and that it seemed to escalate because of ‘gang’ affiliations”.
Lorenzo, a recent high school graduate, was said to have had a positive spirit and a contagious smile.
In an interview with Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, Renton High Dean of Students and basketball coach, Rashaad Powell talked about how he only knew love for Anderson.
While the specifics about what brought Anderson to CHOP and what led to the gun violence are still unknown, friends and people close to the situation say the shooting was not random and that Lorenzo was targeted because of a personal beef.
Lorenzo, was a local rapper that went by the name, “Lil Mob”.
Rooks, an organizer of the CHOP said he was there during the shooting early Saturday morning. Rooks told news reporters:
“(Anderson) was trying to save everybody by telling the people to keep the fireworks away from the trees. An altercation arose from that.”
Rooks went on to say:
“It was just a matter of egos and pride, you know, not wanting to be told what to do”.
Now, Lorenzo’s family is demanding answers from the police and the protesters. Lorenzo’s godmother, Stacy, expressed her anger and frustration to Q13 FOX.
She told news reporters that she is, “outraged, appalled, and disgusted over her godson’s death and wants answers from the protesters occupying the streets around Cal Anderson Park and the East Precinct”.
Stacy went on to say:
“You messed your whole movement because you should’ve sat up here and been protecting him…you guys let a Black life go in your so called ‘Black Lives Matter’ protest on the streets”.
Lorenzo’s godmother wants accountability for his death and justice for Lorenzo.
No arrests have been made as police are still investigating the circumstances that led to the shooting. Seattle police have asked for the public’s help and have encouraged people to call SPD’s Violent Crime Tip Line at (206)-233-5000 with any information.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan stated on Monday, June 22, they will begin to end the police-free zone called the “Capitol Hill Organized Protest” (CHOP) after one deadly shooting and one other shooting.
But is there really a plan to do it? Or is it all hot air? We’re getting conflicting messages between the mayor’s office and our sources within the Seattle Police Department.
CHOP was organized about two weeks ago when police evacuated the ransacked East precinct building in the city’s Capitol Hill. The CHOP activists barricaded the area off in protest to racial inequity and police brutality after the controversial killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police.
Fox News quoted Durkan as saying:
“The cumulative impacts of the gatherings and protests and the nighttime atmosphere and violence has led to increasingly difficult circumstances for our businesses and residents. The impacts have increased, and the safety has decreased.”
Fox News also quoted Durkan as reporting that police, the mayor’s office and fire officials are working to make changes on Capitol Hill partnering with black-led community associations, supporters, small businesses, residents, and trustworthy messengers who will facilitate de-escalation.
Seattle Chief of Police sent her officers a letter
“Thank all of you for your hard work over the weekend and over the last several weeks. I know you are frustrated, and I know you are tired.
My ask of you all is to hold steady and continue acting with integrity and professionalism.
East Precinct Operations
I am advocating every day for options that get officers back into the precinct. There is no definitive timeline, but the department is pushing for it to be as soon as possible. In the interim we are considering a variety of options to mitigate the stress and strain the current circumstances are putting on each of you, as well as the broader community. A community that wants you back in that precinct as well.
The Broader Conversation
It should come as no surprise that the city, and really the entire country, are looking for new ideas on how to best support community safety. This department has shown it can be a leader in this work, and we will be again. Today, I am releasing the initial ideas of the SPD – first to you, and then to the community.
We also are launching the first in a series of efforts to hear directly from you about how to make this department even stronger. It will soon be on the internal homepage, but here is the link to the new digital suggestion form. I ask you to be honest, but constructive. I promise you, I and the command team will review every suggestion. Your ideas – small or large – will help move the department through this extraordinary time.
I support you. I appreciate you.
Be safe and take care of one another.”
Carmen Best
Chief of Police
On Saturday, a 19-year-old male was shot to death while another person was injured.
On Sunday, a 17-year-old was shot in the arm.
Due to difficulties in emergency personnel responding to the CHOP – aka protestors blocking police and fire responders – the volunteer medics inside the area took the shooting victims to the Harborview Medical Center instead of waiting on emergency personnel.
The list of demands by protestors include defunding the police and for other social-justice causes to be addressed by city, state, and federal leaders. This list was presented on Monday by CHOP members.
Other issues were presented in a letter by the 25 activists and volunteers (CHOP) asking leaders to organize safe use areas on the perimeter of the zone, to create signs to help keep drunk individuals away and to implement a curfew to prevent vandalism and other disorderly behavior during the night time hours.
https://twitter.com/ChopVoices/status/1274657465565450240
The activists wrote:
“We would like to acknowledge that no organization, protests, or revolutions are perfect. We must all be willing to collectively learn and react quickly to mistakes made within our movement. We do not want to see what was started with the intention of lifting the BLM message destroyed before us all.”
The letter was written on June 21 to the CHOP organizers, leaders, and community as a whole. It was a request for “change” with in the CHOP area so they could present their message in a peaceful organized manner.
They want to be heard and to be organized with hours of operation (8am-8pm), make the zone safer, and not be a battle zone or zone of destruction. CHOP wants to be able to grow by coordinating Collective Signal/Telegram groups to make safety comms and organizing less difficult.
Lastly, the letter says:
“We want to keep fighting and stand our ground. We want to take back the purpose of this all. We want to raise the correct message. We developed a space that could accomplish this.
A hub for organizing, learning, and protesting. Before it is dismantled from inside out or vise versa, let’s make a collective effort to change. Let’s grow from this.”
Fox News interviewed Mike Solan, President of Seattle Police Officers Guild who stated:
“The CHOP zone is a direct result of city elected officials failing the reasonable community of Seattle to enforce the rule of law and this just isn’t the area occupied in a six block zone where police are still forbidden and still don’t have their East Precinct. This is now impacting our entire city.”
City officials have also chosen to remove less lethal chemical munitions from police hampering the police’s ability to disperse unruly violent crowds. Mike Solan tells Fox News that is matter is of great concern and should be noted by all Americans.
Mike Solan further notes that the zone needs to be dismantled immediately.
He also isn’t sure that the city leaders they have in place are the right people to do it. The Seattle Police Officers Guild is also being asked to step down by a Seattle Labor Group because the guild will not agree that they are a racist institution.
Law Enforcement Today spoke with sources within the Seattle Police Department, who all expressed concern that the city doesn’t have an actual plan for how to do it.
One of the reasons? There are armed protestors who have vowed to not let the “autonomous zone” fall.
“Let’s be clear about something,” a Seattle officer, who asked us to conceal his identity, shared with Law Enforcement Today. “You’ve got armed insurrectionists, you’ve banned us from using non-lethal, and you think we’re all just going to walk in there and they’ll surrender? Here’s an idea – you first, Mayor.”
And on Monday June 15th, 2020 The City Council in Seattle voted unanimously 9-0 to ban the Seattle PD from purchasing or utilizing CS Gas (Tear Gas), Noise Flash Diversionary Devices (Flash Bang Grenades) or Foam/Rubber Tipped Projectiles.
This vote comes after Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and Police Chief Carmen Best placed a temporary ban on CS Gas Friday June 12th, 2020.
Budget Chair Teresa Mosqueda tells KIRO 7 News that she has begun an “inquest” into SPD”s budget.
How much of the $409 million dollar police budget is spent on riot control or demonstrations? Approximately $68,000 was budgeted with $9800 being spent on tear gas, pepper spray and other chemical agents. $2300 on flash bang grenades and $19,000 on “other less than lethal weapons.”
Mosqueda went on to say she hopes to cut funding of SPD up to 50% so the city can invest in more “public health style responses.”
Mosqueda states that then the police can “be more focused on the issues they really signed up for.” Most police officers if asked would most likely say these are the issues they signed up for, with number one on the list being maintaining law and order.
What does Chief Best say about the council taking away less lethal force options?
On Monday, Chief Best was quoted by KING 5 News as saying:
“It has been historically known through the evidence and other research that the use of CS gas, otherwise known as tear gas, can often be a less lethal way of dispersing a crowd without having to go hands on, without using our riot batons. So it has been determined to be less dangerous to do that. That said, it has been very clear to us that people are not wanting us to use the CS.”
Socialist Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, who sponsored the bill, took to Twitter after the unanimous vote claiming a victory for “her party and the movement.”
Breaking News: Seattle City Council unanimously passed our movement’s & my socialist Council office’s legislation banning Seattle police from using or purchasing teargas, blast balls, rubber bullets, other weapons!
HUGE congrats to our movement for this!#BlackLivesMatter
— Kshama Sawant (@cmkshama) June 16, 2020
Now Seattle Police Officers are left with very limited less lethal options during a time when law enforcement is being criticized for using excessive force.
The protests happening all over the country are supposedly to end police brutality? So, voting to save $68,000 which is a negligible amount on tear gas and pepper spray is going to help police use less force how?
Even Chief Best says that CS Gas was an acceptable less lethal option for civil disorder and followed up with “it’s been made very clear to us that people don’t want us using the CS.”
How about the people who don’t want to feel the effects of CS Gas just comply with lawful orders?
We know, that’s a crazy notion.
Seattle Police Officers were injured when demonstrators threw rocks, bottles and even Improvised Explosive Devices at them on Friday June 6th during a night of violent protests. This was after officers advised the demonstrators not to move a barricades outside SPD’s East Precinct on the corner of 11th and Pine Streets.
At about 7:30 p.m. demonstrators outside the East Precinct began moving barricades at 11th and Pine despite multiple requests from police to stop. Individuals began throwing rocks/bottles/and explosives at officers. Several officers injured due to improvised explosives. pic.twitter.com/cbW6hWhIvy
— Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) June 7, 2020
The good news is we don’t have to worry about the East Precinct anymore because it belongs to occupiers now who have created the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or CHAZ. City Leaders as well as Chief Best herself have decided that the occupiers needed the space more than the police did.
Here’s more on CHAZ, or CHOP, whichever they prefer today, as brought to you by Law Enforcement Today.
This below editorial is brought to you by a staff writer for Law Enforcement Today.
The insurrectionist misfits that have taken over part of Seattle and renamed it CHAZ, or CHOP or whatever lame-brained name of the day they have come up with, are now reported to have acquired assault rifles. This is what happens when you have a gutless mayor and a gutless governor. This little anarchist utopia should have been put down days ago.
RT is reporting that the so-called “leader of the pack,” self-declared “warlord” Raz Simone, was shown on video handing out assault rifles apparently to minors. That would be felony in the state of Washington if only the police were actually being permitted to do their job. The video was posted by Simone on his own Facebook page on June 10.
Under Washington state law, anyone between the age of 18 to 21 can only possess a semi-automatic assault rifle or semi-automatic pistol in their place of business, or in their residence. There is also an exception for traveling “to and from” storage locations for example.
Washington State passed a law that went into effect in the new year that classifies the AR-15 as an assault rifle and increases the conditions to own one, including age. What Raz did was entirely illegal. pic.twitter.com/JIh9A6pAFl
— Parler: JackoffJosh711 (@JackoffJosh711) June 15, 2020
It is not known if such laws are applicable in CHOP, which had declared itself a sovereign entity last week, at least until there was a dumpster fire when they called the Seattle Fire Department for help. In normal times and in a city that had leadership with some intestinal fortitude, they would have told them to go pound sand.
The leftist utopia, kind of like the 2020 version of Woodstock where all is love, peace, drugs and rap [unless you go in there and try to preach apparently], which has borders around it [thought those were bad to leftists] has been defended by left-wing Mayor Jenny Durkan, who has said that the six-block district would resemble a “summer of love.”
BLOCK PARTY?! She’s delusional!https://t.co/lFQ7dgl0Er
— David J Harris Jr (@DavidJHarrisJr) June 12, 2020
Durkan hasn’t done anything to try to gain control of the area and has pretty much made herself a laughingstock. One can imagine if this was a group of right-wing, MAGA hat wearing conservatives that took possession of six blocks of a city. It would be 24/7 on CNN, with calls to have cruise missiles fired into the middle of it to take out the evil right-wing zealots.
Or course, the leadership of CHOP or CHAZ or whatever they’re calling it originally claimed the area was something of a “cop-free zone,” where no law enforcement was allowed. Of course, once the self-proclaimed leader of the pack got a taste of some power, he created what is being referred to as a “de facto police replacement ‘to keep peace and unity, honestly that’s it.’”
Chaz also had to dodge a bit of homophobic dirt, claiming that he was “hacked” several years ago after some conservative journalists found tweets from back then when he used homophobic language. Nothing will send a self-proclaimed woke leader to the scrap heap than having any indication of homophobia come out of the closet.
RT also reports that residents (or campers, or squatters, whatever you want to call them) are getting tired of Raz’s apparent power trip. After all, nobody elected him to be the leader of the pack. Who died and made him boss anyway?
Last week, MYNorthwest reported that organizers of CHAZ had confirmed that there were people with guns inside, the guns weren’t visible, despite pictures showing otherwise.
“It is not our intent to create any paradox to try to incite violence or have that be a motif,” said one of the occupiers, Maurice Cola. “We’re not trying to us our guns to flash around—it’s for defense.”
In what can only be considered a beautiful coincidence, Cola said that while people are free to come and go without being stopped, the guns are for defensive purposes to guard against “violent white supremacist groups.”
“There’s local groups of white supremacists who facilitated in trying to give us threats by marching up with their own weaponry, so we are utilizing our rights and bearing arms,” he said. “There are a few people who are monitoring the gate just for our safety, as we already had an active shooter on site.”
Rights? If this is an autonomous territory, what rights is he talking about? Considering these people want to become autonomous and therefore independent from the United States, it isn’t clear what rights he is referring to.
The active shooter reference was relative to an incident last Sunday when an armed man allegedly drove through the crowd and allegedly shot a protester in the arm.
Anyway, the current occupants of Camelot, otherwise known as CHAZ, are apparently tiring of the autonomous zone descending into anarchy (talk about karma). Raz has been facing accusations of punching journalists and having people removed who committed heinous acts of vandalism such as unapproved tagging.
The following post was received from a Seattle police officer, who has chosen to remain anonymous. This is the inside story, the one the media is not providing.
Hey guys, I have a little down time so here is an update on things here.
Absolute madness here. Can’t even express it all. Day 12 for us and our Mayor and chief abandoned a major precinct and gave it to the anarchists. Unthinkable. 9 blocks of our city under the complete control of these terrorists. No joke. This is unreal. No police, no fire dept, no sanity allowed in.
They have an armed force patrolling, manning checkpoints and stopping cars and citizens at gun point. They are creating a currency, an ID system, a supply system that includes food, water, ammo, and chemical weapons. They have access to the precinct and have made it their hq. Our “leaders” are completely silent, and the city council is completely complicit. Yes, they have been on the front lines WITH the anarchists and yes, last night one council member let about 200 into city hall.
The warlord in charge of the new “capitol hill autonomous zone” (CHAZ) drives a tesla and has been arrested for drugs, guns, pimping and crimes against children and is on a federal child porn watch list. He carries an AK-47 and has already started abusing people inside. WTF? You can’t make this up.
We have been castrated. There is no recovering from this. We can’t go near the zone and have been warned by our dept to stay away. We are only working for each other now. We have been in battles where these psychopaths have hit us with rocks, cinderblocks, homemade napalm, and even IEDs. Multiple injuries and THEN we gave up the precinct. Now the guns are out.
This city can burn. I’m working on my exit plan now. The city and state hates us and gives us no support, in fact the leaders are actively supporting this very real insurgency. Yet, all you hear in the media is that they are merely peaceful protesters. This is real. There is a part of our country that is no longer under our control. People need to know. This is not about race. It’s about control.
There was also a video released that showed some of Raz’s gangstas putting a Christian preacher in a chokehold last week.
Seattle’s @MayorJenny Dummy Durkan’s #CHOP (#CHAZ, whatever) #autonomouszone ‘Summer of Love’ Paradise as she calls it!pic.twitter.com/x7p2qU4D3z
— Greatest President Ever! (@realTrumpForce) June 14, 2020
Wait, isn’t that what started this whole thing?
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