Duty To Protect: CHAZ/CHOP Edition
Back in 2018, we discussed a couple of times whether the police have a duty to protect. In the case that we discussed then, it was whether Deputy Scot Peterson had an obligation to go into the school where children were being shot. A handful of students had sued Scot Peterson for failing to perform his duty to protect and the question was the extent to which he (and the county/state) were liable for him failing to perform that duty.
As it turns out, a judge dismissed the case:
“The critical question the court analyzes is whether defendants had a constitutional duty to protect plaintiffs from the actions of Cruz,” Bloom wrote. But she determined that “for such a duty to exist on the part of defendants, plaintiffs would have to be considered to be in custody.”
Well, more recently, there has been a situation where a handful of blocks in the Capitol Hill region of Seattle have either declared themselves an autonomous zone (that is, CHAZ) OR they have declared themselves an occupied protest (that is, CHOP).
Within the CHAZ/CHOP, there was a shooting on June 20th. In the aftermath, it looks like the medics did not go in to the area to retrieve/help one of the people who was in the CHAZ/CHOP-involved shooting incident.
Raz Simone tweeted (warning, strong language):
Medics refused to help even after people in the CHOP begged. They let our bro bleed out for 30 minutes till he died. Fuck politics. Fuck your currupt system. pic.twitter.com/PMwxU9yEzd
— Raz Simone (@RazSimone) June 21, 2020
Which seems to invite the question of whether medics have a duty to protect.
The claims about Scot Peterson that don’t seem to be in dispute are that he was a coward (which is not a legal term) and that he should not have the job of Deputy (well, the union fought for him to be able to keep his job but that’s what unions are for). Whether or not he had a legal duty to protect, there seems to be a consensus that what he did was bad anyway.
To what extent is there a similar set of expectations on the part of medical professionals? Is there a general sense that if these guys didn’t want to go into the CHAZ/CHOP, then they shouldn’t have their jobs?
(Featured image is “IMGP0939.JPG” by Andrman. Used under creative commons license.)
You have an area with an unidentified active shooter and many unknown armed individuals. No paramedic would ever enter without a secured area, otherwise they might need to send 2 more trucks, one for the original victim and one for you. Security is needed for their safety, they cannot save lives if they lose their own.Report
So we’re supposed to expect public servants to have their every action parsed and analyzed looking for possible ill intent and yet then go barreling right on in to situations of danger. Got it.
This is nothing like the Scot Peterson case whatsoever.Report
To be perfectly honest, I can completely understand anger at law enforcement refusing to take risks while, at the same time, completely understand the medical professionals saying “nope, not until the place is secure”.
The former signed up for this crap, the latter did not.
But Raz seems to be taking the reticence of the medics as being evidence of a corrupt system. I’m wondering how nuts he is to be doing that. (I mean, my take on the police arguing that Scot Peterson refusing to go into the school was that it’d result in people saying “we can’t trust the police to protect us either!” and undercut gun control laws. I got an amount of pushback for that that kinda surprised me. I’m wondering if there are people who think that the medics refusing to go into the CHAZ/CHOP are indicating anything around the same ballpark.)Report
Gun control is deader than a door nail. Gun sales are through the roof, and reportedly, even ardent liberal “pacifists” are buying guns. And if the police are defunded, of course there won’t be anyone out there enforcing gun laws anyway, so everybody can just carry whatever they want.
Then there’s the MRAP situation in West Virginia. If the police can have armored vehicles, then isn’t the public is justified in possessing RPGs, and perhaps guided anti-tank missiles? We witnessed the public protests in Venezuela where regular folks obviously needed serious anti-tank weapons. If the police have tanks and the hippies have AR-15’s, regular folks definitely need to up gun.Report
I have so many conflicted feelings about this. I’m going to air them. I’m not sure if I’m on a “side” of this or not, please don’t assume that I am.
Every bit of training I’ve had with regard to emergency services has emphasized, that Rule One is “don’t bring another victim to the scene”. The occupiers of of CHAZ think that they are harmless, and there’s no danger, but there’s no trust there. I think they are naive to think there would be trust. And yet, having been that person that wasn’t trusted (not for any personal reason), it can seem outrageous to not be trusted.
And the suspicion, the lack of trust that the occupiers have for authorities, that was earned to, in no small measure.
In some sense, “fsck the system” is precisely correct, though maybe it means something a bit different to me than to Raz. We are in a bad place. I think it’s a bad place on the way to a better place, but it’s still a bad place.
Also, if you declare a location an “autonomous zone”, you probably should be prepared to be, well, autonomous, and not rely on the city government that you are rejecting to provide you with services.
And as I say that I know, in my heart, that some will read this and think, or perhaps write, “See, he doesn’t really get it. He doesn’t support BLM. He’s a racist.” Is this attitude a solution, or part of the problem?
Just this morning, I had a text chat session with my daughter. When we spoke of politics and BLM, she expressed the notion that I didn’t seem angry enough. This was in response to my praise for the organizers of BLM for their tenacity and fortitude to keep on this issue for what, 10 years? It’s working, things are changing. That’s good. But I say this and my daughter accuses me of not being angry enough.
I’m not really bitter about this, it was a nice chat otherwise. I told her that I was angry, I just hold my anger differently.
Others will think I’m a squishy centrist, and I engage in “bothsidesism”. Maybe I do, but that’s not how I understand myself. I am a systems thinker, and I try to understand all of the parts of the social systems we find ourselves in, and then try to imagine what sorts of interventions will alter the system to something more to our liking. Human social networks are far more complex than we might think, and tweaking them for the better is hard, not easy.
Which this incident is a fine case in point. Does it say anything at all about the worthiness of BLM’s cause? I don’t really think so.Report
CHOP illustrates the fault line between anarchism and leftism.
The entire foundation of progressive thought is that we ought to construct an ordered liberty where freedom occurs within a firmly defined structure of values.
BLM is a progressive movement in that it seeks to have a strong and well defined societal organization which protests minority rights and freedoms.
CHOP shows the promise and limitations of anarchism.
It has been operating for what, three weeks now without any more violence than the overall city of Seattle. Showing that even in the absence of a formal power structure most people live together peaceably.
But CHOP is also whatever the bulk of its people say it is; If a thousand white supremacists were to move there tomorrow, even if they were entirely peaceful, CHOP would become a white supremacist enclave.
Without any structure or creed or constitutional declaration of its values, CHOP has no way to advocate for the aims of BLM.Report
The problem with the CHOP is that the inhabitants thought that there could ever really be justice on stolen land.Report
To be fair, that’s a 100% American belief.Report
Among the problems with a 1619 understanding of political original sin is that what replaces it has, by definition, to be messianic. There’s no method for gradual reform. There’s only a re-founding.
I should be clear, though, that I don’t think CHAZ/CHOP is anything other than a temporary LARP; but the logic of reform is insufficient to the political theory.Report
I would say it is exactly the opposite, that a messianic view of our past is being replaced with a more nuanced and adult one.
I use the term “messianic” in the way that the Founders have been virtually deified; Jon McNaughton may be an extreme example, but his viewpoint of America’s history is very popular.
As we are discovering, virtually all of the founders and historical figures of the past have flaws. And in the process of coming to terms with that the American citizens are better equipped to understand our contemporary leadership choices.Report
IMHO our tolerance for flaws (both personal and in the system) is going down, not up.
For example by absolute standards our current police are less corrupt, incompetent, brutal, and racist than those of previous generations.Report
Right, but what incompetence, brutality, corruption, and racism the police do exhibit is put on blast every time it’s captured on camera, so people can’t pretend to be ignorant of it any more. They either have to admit that they are A-OK with it (through some kind of rationalization), or stand against it.
IMHO, jury is still out regarding which way the majority will go, but I know where my hope lies.Report
Even if we enact total reform, we are going to have to be A-OK with some level of problems. Putting the police’s missteps on video isn’t going away. Incompetence is part of human nature, ditto losing your shit the day after your wife files for divorce.
Because of numbers, we’re always going to have white cops kill black men, and if that on video is enough to “prove” racism then we’re never getting rid of it.Report
Again, I don’t care so much about the racism. I merely want police officers to suffer the exact same consequences other citizens suffer when they violate the rights of their fellows.
If you lose your shit and beat some guy up because your wife filed for divorce yesterday, you get to stand trial for assault and battery, just like the rest of us.Report
Sure, agreed with all that.
I’ll go a step further and say IMHO we’ll be doing extremely well if we get that… but I think large numbers of the current crowd of reformers don’t have realistic expectations.
A good example of that is CHAZ/CHOP starting to realize no police or services means murder is a problem and the medical crews don’t show up.Report
Idealists/Ideologues are the extreme squeaky wheels that get media attention, that’s all.Report
If the more nuanced and adult view is resulting in the CHOP/CHAZ, I imagine it won’t take long for the nuanced adults in the zone to realize that they might have to make unpleasant tradeoffs the way the adolescents that preceded them did.Report
And I would say that you would say that… being an old white guy. That’s you misreading the movement. Optimistically I’d say I hope that’s you *redirecting* the movement. But realistically, I don’t think y’all are doing that – maybe fleetingly – but not in a meaningful way.
So either the movement is smothered by Old White Guys and Karens… or it takes on the new founding. Either way, my point is made.Report
It’s true that the movement of history is hard to discern while its happening because the passion of the moment lends itself to distortion.
A viewer of American politics in 1968 watching the Yippies mix it up with the hard hats would be hard pressed to give an accurate prediction of 1978.
I just don’t see any emerging binary which requires a messianic, or revolutionary outcome. I think its more likely that the textbooks of 2030 will take the view that “Jefferson/ Washington/ Roosevelt were…complicated figures.”Report
Fair point… but that’s also what I’m getting at. We barely teach the riots of 1968. What if looking back in 2030, we remember 2020 as the year NASCAR dropped the confederate flag and we replaced symbolic statues with other symbolic statues that we’ll replace in 2068?
Proof that “reform” was working or proof that “reform” is impossible… or proof that “reform” was never really on the table?
Which might sound confusing since it might sound like I’m pushing for 1619 victory… just to be clear, I’m suggesting that 1619 movement has no victory condition other than re-founding… so the project is volatile in ways I don’t think people quite appreciate – certainly not writers at the NYT.
In this sense the CHAZ/CHOP thing is a sort of groping with the incommensurate demands of the political ideology.Report
If the 1619 project did result in a refounding, it would make a country where all the laws are completely race-based, as opposed to the Constitution not mentioning race at all, except perhaps for a reference to Indian affairs.
I also doubt any new thinking from CHAZ will produce anything resembling a nuanced view of the Founders. Previous generations were extremely literate and thought nothing of reading 800 page biographies of rather obscure political figures, whereas the CHAZ types probably got most of their information from Twitter, Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci (who worked for Mussolini), and reworked echoes from Mein Kampf about racial justice. They’re about as likely to make social improvements as the Khmer Rouge were.Report
The problem with the CHOP is that the inhabitants thought that there could ever really be justice on stolen land.
Yeah! Damned Celts, stealing land from the Picts!
Wait, what are we talking about again?Report
Andy Ngo spent five days in CHAZ and wrote up a report for the New York Post.Report
I feel your pain, Doctor Jay.
I do think you have the right of it though, that an area that’s claiming independence should be prepared to be fully independent.Report
US medical personnel can’t just run around treating people in foreign countries without proper authorization to practice medicine in the host country. The ambulance crew would also need valid passports and have to pass through customs. The folks in CHAZ should work with the UN and perhaps Doctors Without Border to try to improve health care outcomes in their country.
They have a long way to go, since as it is they’re ruled by bands of roving thugs, they attack journalists, they have strict racist policies (access to various areas, resources, and services is purely based on race), and many other basic social failures that are far, far below third world standards. Since their are thousands of US citizens who are living inside CHAZ unwillingly (because their houses are within the zone), a US invasion is probably going to be required to straighten things out.Report
I am reminded of Henry David Thereau, his book Walden, and especially his essay “Civil Disobedience”…
And he still had his mom do his laundry.Report
Wasn’t it his sister? But either way this is a great analogy.Report
I read that CHOP/CHAZ “residents” denied police access to the scene. Is that true? If so, which happened first?Report
Well, let’s go to the Wikipedia.
Citations linked to in the original, but that last sentence links to here and here.
King5 says:
If you want to watch the body cam footage for yourself, check it out here.
The Seattle Times says:
It links to the Seattle Police Blotter as well. It says:
(A member of the city council, apparently, is saying that the shooting was a right-wing attack. I’d wait for more information before I’d start running with that one, of course.)Report
Taking all this (aside from the last bit) at face value, I’m wondering where the details of Raz’s story come from. Can’t really square his version of events with the Wiki.
– What 30 minutes?
– When did volunteers transport the victims?
– How?
– Did the victim who died die at the scene?
I’m sure I could find these details. But — and maybe this is my own bias showing — I don’t have much faith in Raz’s version of events of sympathy for complaints that somehow CHAZ/CHOP folks were done wrong here by the medics.Report
My most serious answer: It has to do with the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics.
Could the medics, conceivably, have saved the young man’s life if they were willing to go in there at full speed ahead? I don’t *KNOW* the answer but I’m willing to bet that the odds are better than nothing at all. So if there is a possibility that the medics could have gone in and saved the young man’s life, the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics will have us conclude that the medics failing to do so were complicit in the young man’s death.
But what about?, I hear you begin to ask. I don’t know if you’d be asking about the people who shouted the cops down, or the possibility that the medics would have run into trouble too, or the possibility that the only thing they could have done is declared the young man dead. But none of those what abouts matter. “What about the guy who shot him? Does he have any culpability?”
Given that the medics could have saved the young man if they ran in there to make it all better and since they didn’t do that… then they are complicit in the young man’s death.
There is plenty of blame to throw around, of course.
But the medics had the job to save lives. And they were derelict in their duties.
There. That’s my best guess to create how Raz was feeling when he tweeted what he did.Report
Things always work well, until they don’t.
The problem with something like the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics is that it comes down to morals by committee. And if you aren’t part of that committee, then they really arent’ your morals, but the morals of someone on the committee.
The moral calculus has changed, and changed in ways we didn’t plan on, and now we are caught flat-footed in regards to other peoples morals.
Things always work well, until they don’t.Report
Well, my problem with the interpretation is that strategic ignorance can solve problems before they start.
Wanna be more moral? Change your preferred news source!
Which strikes me as somewhat nihilist when it comes to meta-ethics despite nigh-absolute moral clarity at the object level.Report
Hole lot of claret out there.
Hole lot.Report
Corporal Desmond Doss would have rushed into the heart of CHAZ to try and save that guy, but people who aren’t Desmond Doss would likely decline.
Plus, if the EMT’s started giving the guy CPR the locals would probably start narrating a video where they’re going on endlessly with “You’re killin’ that man, bro! Quit hittin’ his chest! Are you a racist?!” and then the EMT’s would be facing life in prison for doing their jobs.Report
That is a great link.
No, the difference is the amount of control over the situation. The kids thousands of miles away have something like a billion other moral agents involved (everyone who could afford to send $5). Presumably there are also thousands of moral agents acting immorally who are creating the situation, so me sending money into that morass could easily be me giving money to horrible people. “Slumdog Millionaire beggars”.(*)
The medics don’t have moral agency here because we need to make heroic assumptions on their behavior, and the behavior of too many others… specifically including the crowds of violent people who have declared the system has no access.
(*) My parents used to give to a highly well thought of international charity that goes into poor areas of the world and tries to uplift them. That $5 child in action! They gave it up shortly after I got married. My wife was very pissed to find her neck of the woods in their promotional material. She let my parents know her people are NOT that poor; 2nd world trying to be 1st, not 3rd world trying to live.Report
I’m not doubting the story that the police were “met by a violent crowd that prevented officers safe access to the victims”.
But note how Wikipedia, TV station King 5, The Seattle Times all use the exact phrasing- “met by a violent crowd that prevented officers safe access to the victims”-as the police blotter?
Because of course many, too many media outlets just copy and paste whatever version of a story is fed to the by the police, without bothering to do any work themselves because, well, its cheaper that way.
Here is a different source, The Stranger:
The video also shows protesters confronting a phalanx of cops who entered the zone with guns out and shields raised on a mission to retrieve the victims. Cops say they were “later” told that the victims had already been transported to Harborview before they arrived, but video shows the protesters telling the cops that at least one of the victims had already been driven to the hospital, though there was confusion over “a second body.”
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/06/20/43944133/one-dead-one-in-critical-condition-after-shooting-at-chop-at-220-am
What the sources all agree on is that there was chaos and confusion, with conflicting stories abounding of who did what.Report
Sure. Chaos and confusing and conflicting stories.
Did the medics have an obligation to go in despite the chaos?Report
Regarding the “duty” or obligation of cops and medics, these are just employees of the citizens.
We hire them to do stuff, and their duty is nothing more than what we assign to them.
I don’t think we should assign first responders a heroic level of duty. The purpose of a public first responder unit is to safeguard the public health and safety, not treat a single individual as an end in itself.
This is n’t because of some grand moral scheme, but just a utilitarian calculus. We don’t have the ability to guarantee every persons safety, all the time everywhere. The police can’t function as a team of personal bodyguards.
So the level of risk that first responders take will always be a calculated one, where they assess the risks to themselves and the public and the individual.Report
“Regarding the “duty” or obligation of cops and medics, these are just employees of the citizens.”
To what extent have the Quebec Separatists in the CHOP maintained their own duty as employers of the cops/medics?Report
Thinking about this some more, this is the thing that bugs me about the particular “We All Have Obligations To Each Other” conversation that shows up a lot in discussions of Social Services and a Robust Welfare State.
To what extent can my obligations be said to be met? (Or, if they are an ongoing concern, to what extent can my obligations be said to be being met as an ongoing concern?)
Is there a point at which I can be told “you’re good” (or “keep it up and you’re good”)?
To what extent am I allowed to ask about the obligations of others and whether their obligations have been met (or, as an ongoing concern, etc, etc, etc).
The question “hey, are they meeting their obligation to me?” is usually treated as if it were a defection in and of itself.
And, lemme tell ya, that’s a bad long-term strategy.Report
Maybe what’s causing your unease is that these obligations are negotiated, conditional, and ever-changing.
As we’ve seen, your obligation during a pandemic can expand, then contract only because the collective body says so.
And also as we’ve seen, the collective body’s obligations to you can expand or contract depending on circumstances.Report
Ah, yes. My unease. Would you think that my unease is also related to my relationship to my parents?
A new societal relationship of children to adults in authority might help address not only my unease, but the unease of thousands (if not millions) of people across the country!Report
Bookmarking this for the next discussion on Gun Control.
Speaking of gun control…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMSGy6ImM6AReport
They’ve done pretty well portraying themselves as heroes. Why should we not believe them/Report
“Have you ever fired two guns whilst flying through the air sideways?”
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/7c6246ca-1f5f-4bcc-9b2c-2d68a92b870bReport
I found this account account pretty informative, though there’s still plenty of murk.
What’s left out of Jaybird’s summation is the police attempted to enter the scene in riot gear. What kind of reception did they think they’d get showing up like that? And to add gasoline to the fire, the Seattle police union president appeared on Fox News complaining about the city government’s restraining of the cops. While I’m sure he’d love to go in there and bop some heads he answers to the mayor, and she doesn’t want (any more) heads bopped.
What was lacking here was any sort of communication from the responding authorities to occupiers/protesters. How long would it have taken for someone to say the medics need a police escort for their safety? Instead, we have video of an ambulance driver talking on a radio.Report
The riot gear is mentioned in the wikipedia post.
Here’s the entire section:
There you go.
Now the question is: “What kind of reception did they think they’d get showing up like that?”
What kind of reception did they think they’d get showing up to a homicide that happened moments before in riot gear? I imagine they thought that they’d be attacked.
A self-fulfilling prophecy, I guess.
Well, the police should have been nicer, I guess, when they showed up at the homicide. The medics should have gone in right away. The kid should still be alive.
It’s someone else’s fault.
It’s someone else’s fault.
It’s someone else’s fault.Report
If riot gear is the usual attire for homicide response, then I’m all for it. Somehow I think it’s not.
I’m not absolving anyone with my comment. There’s plenty of assholery going on there, enough for everyone to get a share of the blame.Report
A homicide response in the middle of a zone that, until last week, had declared secession?
I’m down with asking “what kind of reception did they’d think they’d get showing up like that?” if we’re also down with asking “what kind of response did the peaceful protesters celebrating their Summer of Love think they’d get?”Report
A zone that exists at the whim of that city’s mayor. Are you actually taking them that seriously.
As for your 2nd paragraph, I can’t even begin to fathom what that means.Report
I don’t know what “that seriously” means. On one level, they’re buffoons who are childishly squandering the opportunity they have to make a statement.
On another level, they successfully leveraged their moral authority to remove the cops from their region. But now we go back to the whole “buffoon” thing.
As for my second paragraph, I’ll take out the loaded language.
It’s fair to ask “what did the cops think would happen when they showed up like that?”, right? And shake our heads and cluck our tongues and stroke our beards at how poorly they misread the situation.
Is it fair to ask “what did the kiddos think would happen when they asked for the medics to show up?”
If not, why not?Report
Thanks for the clarification. I’m not sure I agree with squandering. Could it be better? Of course. However, CHAZ is 2 weeks old. I’ll bet the whole thing kind of took them by surprise. I’d love to see them get their shit together, but who knows how much time they have.
I imagine what the kiddos thought the medics would do would be what they see on TV, which is respond to the emergency. Again, a 60 second conversation about why police were necessary would have gone a long way here. Why is this bit of information being guarded like a state secret?Report
I imagine that most of the television shows they watched took place in a post-Reconstruction Union rather than in a makeshift Confederacy.
As for the information being guarded like a state secret, I imagine it’s more likely that it didn’t have a good way to travel among the mob. “Sorry, the medics won’t go in until the area is secure and the medics will not take the word of the kiddos for whether the area is secure but will only take the word of the cops. The cops insist on going in fully kitted up. Take it or leave it.”
And if only half of the mob finds that offer reasonable… then what?
(And that’s assuming the information makes it accurately all the way through the mob.)Report
You must have been watching a different video than I did. I saw zero attempts to communicate.Report
What is the IQ of a mob again?Report
The IQ of its dumbest member divided by the number of people in the mob.Report
There was bodycam video where the kiddos and the police were communicating.Report
https://www.crimeonline.com/2020/06/21/see-it-body-cam-footage-shows-seattle-police-try-to-enter-autonomous-zone-after-shooting/
This has a link to video compiled by SPD but the footage provided shows the police moving in and being told (shouted at) that the victims had already been transported out of the zone. Do you have a link to any footage prior to that?Report
Yeah, that’s the same footage I saw in the link above.
As for communication… I’m not sure what level of communication we see as what ought to be expected by both parties here.Report
I’m more concerned with timing. All this footage is after the fact as far as gunshot victims being on the scene.Report
The only footage I have is stuff from the cops and stuff claiming to be from around the altercation by complete strangers on the Twitter.Report
They were going in like that because SEAL Team Six wasn’t available. US personnel going into CHAZ at two in the morning without sufficient force protection is probably as daft as strolling through Fallujah in the spring of 2004.Report
The zone is going to run into the problem that if I am a horrible person on the run from the police, then I should go hang out at the zone. The zone’s defenders lack a lot of resources.
The police also do things like contract enforcement, landlords can’t have the cops evict people and so forth.
This will be interesting.Report
I agree. CHOP is discovering that order isn’t spontaneous.
Or rather, the order which arises spontaneously is not an order most of us would prefer.
I notice this:
Sunday afternoon a group representing approximately 25 CHOP residents released an open letter calling for restricted substance use zones, “suggested” operating hours of 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and better communication systems. “We want to raise the correct message,” the letter reads. “We developed a space that could accomplish this. A hub for organizing, learning, and protesting. Before it’s dismantled from inside out or vice versa, let’s make a collective effort to change.”
A “group representing” CHOP…as with any sort of primitive community, there is a slowly emerging grasp that there needs to be some legitimate voice and body which can resolve and enforce norms.
Everybody here remember the tv show Deadwood?
This reminds me of that. At the opening of the show Deadwood is a lawless rude camp where sewage ran in the muddy streets, and by the end, they had a a mayor, city council, fire codes, and building codes.Report
People who have accommodated to existence in an imposed order are not going to be waiting for spontaneous order to arise. They will reconstruct the imposed order as soon as possible.
It’s akin to denying evolution because an ape won’t evolve into a human in your lifetime.Report
Speaking of spontaneous order, this is an interesting thread.Report
As an EMT when you approach a scene where a violent act(s) have occurred, it is protocol for the police to clear the scene first. They are not required too (and their safety protocols prohibit) entering a crime scene without police protection.Report
Here’s an interview with one of the CHAZ medics who responded. It sounds like the guy who died was never going to make it anyway.
https://www.facebook.com/256456004789181/videos/2635995596680501Report
I wouldn’t suggest that he need to show his medical credentials, lest he be doxed and then charged as an accessory after the fact (though I think that Washington has a Good Samaritan law that covers his actions). He does seem to have more than none at all, from what I could gather.
But there’s more than a little motivated reasoning going on there.Report
although “we won’t waste resources on someone who’s gonna die anyway” is a key tenet of most national healthcare plans, so, as the kids say on the Twitter, “this is the world that liberals want”…Report
They’ve had a 2nd shooting. “A Harborview Medical Center spokeswoman said that the victim arrived in a private vehicle and was in serious condition.”
The first was June 20. The second was June 21.Report
Here’s the news report.
It was only a shooting, not a homicide. There’s no reason to believe it was related to the homicide the other day. Why do people keep looking at the CHAZ/CHOP anyway? NYC’s shooting rate went up 33% from this time last year! Nobody is talking about *THAT*.Report
You say that like it’s a good thing.
This is an educational process. Everyone is learning what is possible and what they should expect. The first season of survivor we thought it’d be about survival and not tribalism + office politics.Report
Let’s just look at CHAZ’s posted demands.
Given the historical moment, we’ll begin with our demands pertaining to the Justice System.
The Seattle Police Department and attached court system are beyond reform. We do not request reform, we demand abolition.
We demand that the Seattle Council and the Mayor defund and abolish the Seattle Police Department and the attached Criminal Justice Apparatus. This means 100% of funding, including existing pensions for Seattle Police. At an equal level of priority we also demand that the city disallow the operations of ICE in the city of Seattle.
In the transitionary period between now and the dismantlement of the Seattle Police Department, we demand that the use of armed force be banned entirely. No guns, no batons, no riot shields, no chemical weapons, especially against those exercising their First Amendment right as Americans to protest.
We demand an end to the school-to-prison pipeline and the abolition of youth jails. Get kids out of prison, get cops out of schools. We also demand that the new youth prison being built in Seattle currently be repurposed.
We demand that not the City government, nor the State government, but that the Federal government launch a full-scale investigation into past and current cases of police brutality in Seattle and Washington, as well as the re-opening of all closed cases reported to the Office of Police Accountability. In particular, we demand that cases particular to Seattle and Washington be reopened where no justice has been served, namely the cases of Iosia Faletogo, Damarius Butts, Isaiah Obet, Tommy Le, Shaun Fuhr, and Charleena Lyles.
We demand reparations for victims of police brutality, in a form to be determined.
We demand that the City of Seattle make the names of officers involved in police brutality a matter of public record. Anonymity should not even be a privilege in public service.
We demand a retrial of all People in Color currently serving a prison sentence for violent crime, by a jury of their peers in their community.
We demand decriminalization of the acts of protest, and amnesty for protestors generally, but specifically those involved in what has been termed “The George Floyd Rebellion” against the terrorist cell that previously occupied this area known as the Seattle Police Department. This includes the immediate release of all protestors currently being held in prison after the arrests made at 11th and Pine on Sunday night and early Saturday morning June 7th and 8th, and any other protesters arrested in the past two weeks of the uprising, the name Evan Hreha in particular comes to mind who filmed Seattle police macing a young girl and is now in jail.
We demand that the City of Seattle and the State Government release any prisoner currently serving time for a marijuana-related offense and expunge the related conviction.
We demand the City of Seattle and State Government release any prisoner currently serving time just for resisting arrest if there are no other related charges, and that those convictions should also be expunged.
We demand that prisoners currently serving time be given the full and unrestricted right to vote, and for Washington State to pass legislation specifically breaking from Federal law that prevents felons from being able to vote.
We demand an end to prosecutorial immunity for police officers in the time between now and the dissolution of the SPD and extant justice system.
We demand the abolition of imprisonment, generally speaking, but especially the abolition of both youth prisons and privately-owned, for-profit prisons.
We demand in replacement of the current criminal justice system the creation of restorative/transformative accountability programs as a replacement for imprisonment.
We demand autonomy be given to the people to create localized anti-crime systems.
We demand that the Seattle Police Department, between now and the time of its abolition in the near future, empty its “lost and found” and return property owned by denizens of the city.
We demand justice for those who have been sexually harassed or abused by the Seattle Police Department or prison guards in the state of Washington.
We demand that between now and the abolition of the SPD that each and every SPD officer turn on their body cameras, and that the body camera video of all Seattle police should be a matter of easily accessible public record.
We demand that the funding previously used for Seattle Police be redirected into: A) Socialized Health and Medicine for the City of Seattle. B) Free public housing, because housing is a right, not a privilege. C) Public education, to decrease the average class size in city schools and increase teacher salary. D) Naturalization services for immigrants to the United States living here undocumented. (We demand they be called “undocumented” because no person is illegal.) E) General community development. Parks, etc.
We also have economic demands that must be addressed.
We demand the de-gentrification of Seattle, starting with rent control.
We demand the restoration of city funding for arts and culture to re-establish the once-rich local cultural identity of Seattle.
We demand free college for the people of the state of Washington, due to the overwhelming effect that education has on economic success, and the correlated overwhelming impact of poverty on people of color, as a form of reparations for the treatment of Black people in this state and country.
We demand that between now and the abolition of the SPD that Seattle Police be prohibited from performing “homeless sweeps” that displace and disturb our homeless neighbors, and on equal footing we demand an end to all evictions.
We demand a decentralized election process to give the citizens of Seattle a greater ability to select candidates for public office such that we are not forced to choose at the poll between equally undesirable options. There are multiple systems and policies in place which make it impractical at best for working-class people to run for public office, all of which must go, starting with any fees associated with applying to run for public office.
Related to economic demands, we also have demands pertaining to what we would formally call “Health and Human Services.”
We demand the hospitals and care facilities of Seattle employ black doctors and nurses specifically to help care for black patients.
We demand the people of Seattle seek out and proudly support Black-owned businesses. Your money is our power and sustainability.
We demand that the city create an entirely separate system staffed by mental health experts to respond to 911 calls pertaining to mental health crises, and insist that all involved in such a program be put through thorough, rigorous training in conflict de-escalation.
Finally, let us now address our demands regarding the education system in the City of Seattle and State of Washington.
We demand that the history of Black and Native Americans be given a significantly greater focus in the Washington State education curriculum.
We demand that thorough anti-bias training become a legal requirement for all jobs in the education system, as well as in the medical profession and in mass media.
We demand the City of Seattle and State of Washington remove any and all monuments dedicated to historical figures of the Confederacy, whose treasonous attempts to build an America with slavery as a permanent fixture were an affront to the human race.
https://medium.com/@seattleblmanon3/the-demands-of-the-collective-black-voices-at-free-capitol-hill-to-the-government-of-seattle-ddaee51d3e47Report
The only editing I did was to put in more page breaks. Sorry I forgot to put the whole thing in quotes and bold it or something. This is more or less in response to George Turner’s last post about what to expect from them.Report
It certainly has shades of the first party congress in the USSR. That led to a ridiculous number of trivially minor crimes being punishable by death.
Meanwhile, Quillette had an interesting article called The Purity Paradox: How Tolerance and Intolerance Increase at the Same TimeReport
What I find astounding about this list is how modest and sensible it seems.Report
Monuments to the Confederacy to be removed, but nothing about monuments to Union commanders who then went West to take part in the genocide going on there?Report
You’re skipping ahead, that’s not scheduled for another 12-18 months.Report
That’s me, always in a hurry. The prevailing attitude in 1861 where I went to grade school was that the Civil War was distracting the U.S. Army from it’s real responsibility, which was eradicating the Indians.Report
I think its worth pointing out how malleable our attitudes are, how easily we just accept what we grew up with as perfectly normal and natural, even when those who came before us would find our world shocking, even bizarre.
For example, imagine a Union soldier who endured the trauma and horror of the war, but was soothed by at least the thought that it had not been all in vain, that the Confederacy had been defeated and the Union preserved.
Then, like in a science fiction movie, waking up in 2020 to be surrounded by statues of the hated enemy, triumphantly astride massive pedestals, and seeing Americans proudly waving the Confederate flag.
And worse, his heirs, his very own great great grandchildren, protesting that this was their heritage, that anyone who wanted to destroy a statue of General Lee was an enemy of America.
I think this demonstrates the power and effectiveness of the Lost Cause propaganda, that they were able to retroactively win the Civil War and erase the true history in favor of their mythology.Report
‘Retroactively win the civil war’? Are you being intentionally hyperbolic or do you think that’s really an accurate assessment of the world we live in?Report
Considering how effectively they were able to disenfranchise the former slaves and restore them to near-slavery conditions, its not much hyperbole.Report
It wasn’t the Confederate Army that the Union soldiers hated. Considering that the Civil War was at least half a populist movement of white-supremacist Midwesterners attacking wealthy Southerners in an attempt to prevent more blacks from entering the country, I’d say that your typical blue-coater would be entirely okay with statues of Johnny Reb or military commanders.Report
The US banned the importation of slaves way back in 1808. One would think the Midwesterners would have found out about that when they were still living back East.Report
Proving my point, about the effectiveness of Confederate propaganda.Report
Not that I necessarily agree with DD, but you can not simply declare that a person is believing a lie without presenting clear evidence of the truth you are claiming.
Down that road is Nutty Conspiracy Land.Report
The text of every reputable history book of the Civil War wouldn’t fit in this comment box.
The idea that the Unionists were fighting a war simply to prevent blacks from from entering is ludicrous, and the insinuation that there was a moral equivalence to the two sides is grotesque.Report
Umm…. The Union soldiers encountered that in 1865 and every year thereafter. It was basically a couple of generations before Southern Democrats would even sing The Star Spangled Banner, which was that hated Yankee Republican anthem.
Today, the only people trying to return to race based laws and institutions are Democrats, so the Union soldier wouldn’t even notice a difference.Report
So much weird stuff happens.
When I was in high school, one of my friend’s grandfather was a pure-blood Winnebago. At that time, when you stopped by a friend’s house it was expected that you would at least stick your head into the kitchen to say hi to their mom, dad, or whichever relative was there. One day my friend stopped me before I got that far to say — from memory here, so somewhat suspect — “Grandpa’s here. All you need to remember is that if you, like too many people, say ‘Winnibago Sioux’ he will literally spit at you. There are Winnebago, and there are ‘f*cking Sioux.’ Since he’s here, you can say ‘f*cking Sioux’ in front of mom.”Report
12-18 months? That’s optimistic as heck. I saw calls to pull down statues of Jesus (and stained glass depictions, etc) today.
I was pretty sure that we weren’t going to get those until July.Report
Yea you’re probably right. I forgot we’ve reached light speed on the path to wherever it is we’re going.Report
Also apparently I was quite wrong. Not a Union general, but it looks like Michael was right on time with the concept. Andrew Jackson is next.
https://wtop.com/dc/2020/06/dc-police-trying-to-clear-protesters-camps-from-black-lives-matter-plaza/Report
Trump said he might declare all statues and monuments to be under federal jurisdiction.
That means 18 USC 1369 would apply, which carries a 10 year prison sentence.Report
From my understanding, it’s a bit more complex than that. He’s pointing out that they already were under federal jurisdiction given a handful of the laws that were already on the books but nobody noticed until recently.
The argument isn’t “we’re passing a law today against what you did yesterday”. It’s “we passed a law decades ago about this thing that recently became fashionable”.Report
Rent control?
Oh, goodness gracious.Report
Good thing they included a line about no more causing difficulty for the homeless because they’re bent on mass producing them.Report
To be fair there were a lot of ideas in there that could be turned into something like a decent policy. For fun I’m going to list the ones that seem like problems out of the gate.
No youth prisons (keep them with the adults)
“abolition of imprisonment” (so all criminals are quickly reformable)
“autonomy be given to the people to create localized anti-crime systems” (i.e. lynch mobs will be legal)
“Rent Control” (reduce the supply of housing).
“an end to all evictions.” (reduce the supply of housing)
“Free public housing, because housing is a right” (reduce the supply of housing)
“free college” (the rest of that demand reads like “for POC only” but it says “people of Washington”.)
“We demand the hospitals and care facilities of Seattle employ black doctors and nurses specifically to help care for black patients.” (the new set up will be separate but equal).
“the people of Seattle seek out and proudly support Black-owned businesses” (if this is gov policy, presumably we’re checking business owners’ skin color and then showering them with public money)
“election process… to select candidates… not forced to choose… between equally “undesirable options. ” (no definition on what is to replace “voting” or who gets to define “undesirable”).Report
I don’t even agree with all of this list, and most need a lot of massaging to be workable in any environment.
But compare this cautious, hedged and modest list, with Tom Cotton or Tucker Carlson’s demands for the government troops to storm in and crush the rabble and make them obey.
Whither the totalitarians?Report
We have people getting shot and/or killed because there’s a lawless area in the US. If it weren’t a joke it’d be deep into “failed state” territory.
In previous discussions we’ve talked about why it’s legal to drone people in other countries but not inside the US, my answer has been that we can just have the police arrest someone. If we’re serious about allowing the zone to exist (which we’re not) then part of that package is the US gets to drone people in it at will.
Cotton and Carlson are treating this more seriously than it deserves (i.e. they’re virtue signalling), but they have a point.Report
Modern protest isn’t about achieving things, it’s about showing that you want the Right Things, so that in the glorious future that will soon come about (and is only being held back by the racist gender-essentialist capitalist clinging to their unearned privilege) you’ll be recognized as one of the Good People.
it’s the same thing as Puritans swearing off liquor and cards; it’s not about making things better right now, it’s about making sure that the gatekeepers of the next world know you’re supposed to be inside the fence and not outside it.Report
If they wanted the things on this list to happen, they should have brought a lot more armed people with the willingness to use those arms to secure their demands. The consistent failure of the left to do this is why they almost never get what they want. If you’re not willing to kill and/or die for something. you’re almost certainly not going to get it, unless giving it benefits the existing power structure. I really wish more leftists would get that through their skulls. Instead, it’s always this Burning Man bullshit.Report
In a nutshell their big demand is society treat them like they’re not violent.Report
It is now being reported, after the second shooting, that the mayor intends to wind the CHAZ/CHOP/Quebec down.
Report
Memology is showing a revealing stream from the second CHAZ shooting.Report
She lost on public opinion, and doesn’t want another WTO/Occupy thing going on. Not a bad idea, it was starting to come across as a pro-Trump ad.Report
There seems to be some tragedy going on in the common areas (but not the private ones):
Tempered by:
Report
Let me guess: The city has engineers who need to poke the water/power systems in these public areas and just like the medics they won’t go into a “free” zone.Report
If a right-wing militia army occupied the heart of a major city and made local home and business owners go through armed checkpoints, somehow I doubt the media would refer to them as the local “citizens”.Report
Well, have the CHAZ leaders been paying their electric and water bills like the local businesses and residences have?
I’m guessing they didn’t because they’re not organized enough to read mail and they think gas, water, and electricity should be free, along with food. They should ask people in Venezuela how that works out.
So far, at least the local residents got to live the dream of being in “The Man in the High Castle.” The only upside is that when this episode of racist dictatorship ends, the CHAZ leaders won’t have managed to loot the entire economy and stash billions of dollars into offshore bank accounts.Report
Heat wave my ass. It’s called summer you fecking idiot. Stop running around in all black and you’ll be fine.Report
Dude! You just harshed all my high school friends!Report
There were protests in Milwaukee Wisconsin with statues at the capitol being pulled down. Apparently either Wisconsin’s capitol is awash in Confederate monuments or their school systems are an abject failure. Anyway, one of the Democrat state senators thought he’d take photos of the crowd. It did not go well.
Here’s a Twitter thread from him
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Excellent link.Report
so far most of the statue-topplings I’ve seen are of people who got statues for fighting slaveowners and the Confederacy, so, looks like statue-toppling is just what the kids are doing these days.Report
Protesters were using a chain to try and topple a famous Lincoln statue, which used to be called the Lincoln Memorial. The monument was paid for entirely by freed slaves and dedicated by Fredrick Douglas. The idiot Harvard student leading the mob apparently couldn’t even read the plaque on it which says
I swear, if these protesters could travel back in time to 1865, they’d go up to freed slaves and spit in their faces for praising a Republican.Report
Yeah they’re idiots and only have the slightest sparks of attempts at justifying why they did it. It isn’t a big deal, though, any statues of meritorious people the nuts topple can simply be repaired and put back.Report
Being pedantic, but Milwaukee is not the state capital, just the largest metro.
Madison is the capital.Report
What kind of state would name its capital city after a slave owner?!
Kentucky, a former slave state, would never have done such a thing. It named its capital after some random Jewish guy named Frank who got shot by a racist Indian at a river crossing.
Meanwhile, Rhode Island is apparently changing its name because of the George Floyd protests, dropping the “Providence Plantation” part. I say we get some Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders to raise a ruckus and make the state drop “Island”, which is an insult to the intelligence of everyone who knows what islands are. Once the state is just called “Rhode” it will be easier to fit the name inside the tiny little space on the map. I’ll also bet that Washington State ends up changing its name to either Cobainistan or The People’s Republic of Amazon.Report