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Seattle has a question that needs to be answered this week. How will police keep citizens safe from lawless mobs if police have to worry about being safe in their own homes?
Aggressive Protesting?
A group of what Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best characterized as “aggressive protesters” targeted her home in Snohomish County Saturday night, reports the WSJ.
In a letter to Seattle’s City Council, Chief Best reported that her neighbors kept the protesters from trespassing on or engaging in other illegal behavior “despite repeated attempts to do so.” She urged the council to “stand up” and denounce the behavior before “this devolves into the new way of doing business by mob rule.”
Chief Best Is Right
A big reason demonstrations have turned illegal and violent in so many U.S. cities is because progressive mayors and city councils have looked the other way or egged them on. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan cheered on demonstrations for weeks and called a police no-go zone “a summer of love.” But on 28 June protesters marched on her home. Two days later the mayor issued an executive order to clear up the occupied zone, and the next morning it was carried out.
A Rare Voice of Common Sense
Chief Best clearly disagreed with Seattle’s decision to surrender a police precinct to occupiers. She also told the City Council that a ban on tools such as pepper spray left police with few non-lethal options, beyond riot shields and batons, continues the WSJ.
Chief Best says she worries what will happen if the City Council and others in responsibility don’t denounce what happened outside her home on Saturday night.
Even Mayor Durkan said Seattle must distinguish between upholding people’s First Amendment right to “peacefully demonstrate” and turning a blind eye to those who “put families and children at risk.”
After this brazen attempt to bully its police chief, now would be a good time for Seattle to start.
