Business owners in Seattle sued the city on Wednesday on the grounds that city officials were complicit in allowing the “occupied protest” to take over their neighborhood, and putting their safety at risk.
Some of the businessess involved in the suit include an auto shop, a tattoo parlor, and a property management company. Residents and workers also joined in on the lawsuit.
Members of the community are rightly fed up after city officials had forfeited the area to the control of violent anarchists.
CNN reports:
Residents and businesses in a Seattle neighborhood filed a class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the city for "extensive harm" suffered from the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, or CHOP.The plaintiffs "support protesters' right to bring issues such as systemic racism and police brutality," but the occupation has caused financial hardship and disrupted daily life, said Calfo Eakes LLP, the law firm representing the group, in a statement.
Four shootings in the area have erupted since Saturday, leaving one person dead.
"For more than two weeks, and with the full knowledge and participation of the City, our clients' neighborhood and properties have been blocked, barricaded, occupied, and vandalized," the attorneys' statement reads.
City officials, including Mayor Jenny Durkan and police Chief Carmen Best have dragged their feet for long enough and people are sick of it.
They played the dangerous game of appeasment with these violent protestors for far too long, and citizens of Seattle have suffered due to their incompetence.
The New York Post adds:
The class-action suit claims the group have had their rights “overrun by the city of Seattle’s unprecedented decision to abandon and close off an entire city neighborhood.”The so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, which sprouted up on June 8, has been “unchecked by police, unserved by fire and emergency health services, and inaccessible to the public at large,” the lawsuit said.
While the plaintiffs would like to restore normalcy to the area, they stressed in the suit that the legal action was not meant to undermine the protest’s anti-police brutality and Black Lives Matter messaging.
The group said in the suit that on occasions they have been threatened by protesters for photographing them or cleaning graffiti from their property.
One of the businesses included the suit — auto shop Car Tender — said a protester broke into his shop on June 14, started a fire and attacked his son with a knife.
The father-son duo were able to detain the burglar, but police did not respond and other protesters forced them to release the attacker, the suit says.
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.
This just goes to show, when you try and appease a violent mob, it won't end well for you.
Mayor Durkan allowed this madness go on for so long, and now she faces backlash from both angry residents as well as the very protestors she and city officials bent over backwards for in the first place.
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