The Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP), also known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, originally known as Free Capitol Hill and later as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), was an occupation protest and self-declared autonomous zone in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. The zone, originally covering two intersections at the corners of Cal Anderson Park and the roads leading up to them, was established on June 8, 2020 by people protesting the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The zone was cleared of occupants by police on July 1, 2020.
The formation of the zone was preceded by tense interactions between protesters and police in riot gear beginning on June 1, 2020. On June 1, thousands of Seattle residents were attending a permitted rally event at Westlake Mall in Downtown Seattle, one mile west of Seattle's east precinct in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Police lined the northeast side of the rally and fired tear gas into the crowd. The event became chaotic and people began moving east toward Capitol Hill, where they eventually congregated, and protests continued each night. Police used tear gas, flash-bangs, and pepper spray in the densely populated residential neighborhood. The situation escalated on June 7 after the brother of a police officer drove his vehicle toward a crowd of protestors at 11th Avenue and Pine Street near the East Precinct police station. He shot a protester who tried to stop him. The same day, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) reported that protesters were throwing rocks, bottles, and fireworks, and shining green lasers into officers' eyes. The next day, the SPD vacated and boarded up its East Precinct building in an effort to deescalate the situation. After the SPD vacated the East Precinct station, protesters moved into the Capitol Hill area. They repositioned street barricades in a one-block radius around the station and declared the area "Free Capitol Hill". The protest area was later renamed the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP).
The zone was a self-organized space without official leadership. Police were not welcome within it. Protesters demanded that Seattle's police budget be decreased by 50%, that funding be shifted to community programs and services in historically black communities, and that CHOP protesters not be charged with crimes. Participants created a block-long "Black Lives Matter" mural, held free film screenings in the street, and performed live music. A "No Cop Co-op" was formed, with food, hand sanitizer and other supplies. Areas were set up for public speakers and to facilitate discourse.
The CHOP was a focus of national attention during its existence. On June 11, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said the zone had a "block party" atmosphere; later, The New York Times contrasted Durkan's words with local businesspeople's accounts of harassment, vandalism, and looting. The CHOP's size decreased after shootings in or near it on June 20, 21, and 23. On June 28, Durkan met with protesters and told them that the city planned to remove most barricades and limit the zone's area. In the early morning of June 29, a fourth shooting left a black 16-year-old boy dead and a black 14-year-old boy critically injured. Calling the situation "dangerous and unacceptable", police chief Carmen Best told reporters: "Enough is enough. We need to be able to get back into the area." On July 1, after Durkan issued an executive order, Seattle police cleared the area of protesters and reclaimed the East Precinct station. Protests continued in Seattle and at the CHOP site over the following days and months.
History Background
Capitol Hill is a densely populated residential district on a steep hill just east of Seattle's downtown business district, known for its prominent LGBT and counterculture communities and its vibrant nightlife. The Seattle Police Department had been protested against in the past. In 1965, during the civil rights movement, after Robert L. Reese, an unarmed black man, was shot by an SPD officer, community leaders followed police in "freedom patrols" to observe and record their interactions with the Black community. Since 2012, the SPD had been under federal oversight after it had been found to use excessive force and biased policing.
Seattle had been the location of other mass protests, such as the 1999 WTO protests and Occupy Seattle. The city is home to several cultural institutions created by occupation protests, including the Northwest African American Museum, the Daybreak Star Cultural Center, and El Centro de la Raza.
Protests over the murder of George Floyd and police brutality began in Seattle on May 29, 2020. Street clashes occurred in greater Seattle for nine days, involving protesters, the Seattle Police Department, the Washington State Patrol, and the Washington National Guard.
Capitol Hill clashes (June 1–8)
The zone's formation was preceded by a week of tense interactions in the Capitol Hill neighborhood beginning on June 1, when protesters and police in riot gear faced off at a police barricade near the SPD's East Precinct building after a child was pepper sprayed and police refused to let paramedics treat the child. The SPD used dispersal tactics, including blast balls, flash-bangs, and pepper spray. On June 5, Mayor Jenny Durkan and SPD Chief Carmen Best announced a 30-day ban on the use of tear gas.
A group of public representatives (including four City Council members, a King County Council member, State Senator Joe Nguyen, and State Representative Nicole Macri) joined demonstrators on June 6 on the front lines in response to citizen requests, when officers again used flash-bangs and pepper spray to control the crowd.
On June 7, police installed sturdier barricades around the East Precinct and boarded up its windows. The situation intensified after 8 pm, when a demonstrator was shot while trying to slow down a vehicle speeding toward a crowd of 1,000 protesters on 11th Avenue and East Pine Street; the driver left the vehicle with a gun and walked toward the police line, where he was taken into custody without incident. It later became known that the shooter's brother worked at the East Precinct. After midnight on June 8, police reported that protesters were throwing bottles, rocks, and fireworks. The SPD resumed using tear gas (despite the mayor's ban), and used pepper spray and flash-bangs against protesters at 11th and Pine. Over 12,000 complaints were filed about police response to the demonstrations, and members of the Seattle City Council asked how many weapons had been thrown at police.
On June 8, Durkan's office told SPD leaders to remove the barricades around the East Precinct to allow protesters to march on the street outside. SPD reports stated that they opposed this decision and were worried about the destruction of the East Precinct, so they began to remove sensitive equipment from the building. Chief Best announced the barricade removal in a press release that afternoon, saying the East Precinct would not be abandoned and that the change was "an exercise in trust and de-escalation".
Later that day, SPD boarded up and unexpectedly vacated the East Precinct. It remained unclear days later who had decided to retreat from the East Precinct, since Best did not admit responsibility. Durkan later attributed the decision to withdraw to an unnamed SPD on-scene commander. Over a year later, KUOW reported that Assistant Chief Tom Mahaffey made the decision, and that he had done so without Best's or Durkan's knowledge. Mahaffey amended his account to say that Best had authorized the evacuation of staff from the East Precinct, but Best said she was not part of the decision. Seattle's Office of Police Accountability decided that in either case, the decision was reasonable but should have been communicated to the public earlier.
Formation and operation On June 8, after the SPD had vacated the East Precinct station, protesters moved into the Capitol Hill area. They positioned street barricades in a one-block radius around the station, and declared the area "Free Capitol Hill".
Mayor Durkan called the zone an attempt to "de-escalate interactions between protesters and law enforcement", and Best said that her officers would look at approaches to "reduce our footprint" in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. City Council member Kshama Sawant spoke to occupants of Cal Anderson Park on June 8 and urged protesters to turn the precinct into a community center for restorative justice. Police were not welcome within the CHOP.
That night, in an attempt to split protesters away from CHOP, four SPD officers created a "ruse". They knew members of the public were monitoring police radio traffic, so they invented a Proud Boys march of 20–30 armed people who were ready for a fight and heading from downtown Seattle toward Capitol Hill. The police shared updates about the nonexistent march on public channels, which led some protesters to arm themselves in preparation for a clash. The ruse was part of a broader "misinformation effort" that the captain of the East Precinct approved with the stated goal to make protesters believe SPD "had more officers out there doing regular stuff".
On June 10, about 1,000 protesters marched into Seattle City Hall demanding Durkan's resignation.
Observers described early zone activity on June 11 as a hybrid of other movements, with an atmosphere that was "part protest, part commune"; a cross between "a sit-in, a protest and summer festival"; or a blend of "Occupy Wall Street and a college cooperative dorm." According to a June 16 Vox article, CHOP had evolved into "a center of peaceful protest, free political speech, co-ops, and community gardens" after protesters recovered from their initial confusion over the police decision to leave the precinct. In an interview given on June 11th, Mayor Durkan remarked that it was "more like a block party atmosphere" and commented "[w]e could have the summer of love."
On June 11, the SPD announced its desire to reenter the abandoned East Precinct building and said it still operated in the zone; according to Washington governor Jay Inslee, the zone was "un-permitted" but "largely peaceful". The next day, Best said: "Rapes, robberies and all sorts of violent acts have been occurring in the area and we have not been able to get to it." In the early morning of June 12, Isaiah Thomas Willoughby, a former Seattle resident, set a fire at the East Precinct building and walked away; community residents extinguished it before it spread beyond the building's external wall or to nearby tents. Later that day, Durkan visited the zone and told a New York Times reporter that she was unaware of any serious crime reported in the area. Most of the people Vox interviewed had participated in the protests but did not feel safe walking in the area at night, especially in late June. One Capitol Hill resident noted a difference in perspective between outsiders and residents: "I feel a lot of the current 'it's not safe' stuff comes from either people who aren't living in the neighborhood itself or from affluent new arrivals, or from business owners." Also on June 12, a federal judge temporarily banned SPD from using less-lethal crowd control weapons like tear gas, pepper spray, and foam-tipped projectiles on protesters, saying the department had used them "disproportionately and without provocation".
Some protesters lived in tents inside the zone. Urban camping was illegal in Seattle at the time (Seattle Municipal Code 18.12.250 ) but the law was seldom enforced.
On June 13, Black Lives Matter protesters negotiated with local officials about leaving the zone. The CHOP's size decreased four days later (when roadblocks were moved).