Capitol Hill businesses call for intervention of city government as crimes spike in Seattle’s notorious CHAZ neighborhood

05/13/2024 / By Belle Carter

The Capitol Hill Business Alliance (CHBA), a group of business owners in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, recently wrote a letter to the city government asking for its intervention in the current situation of the area, which seemed to have become a deterrent to visitors due to rampant vandalism and public drug use.

In the letter addressed to the Seattle Mayor’s Office, CHBA said: “People don’t want to spend time in unclean neighborhoods. Consistent investment in cleanup, environmental lighting, and activation of vacant buildings will underscore the neighborhood’s reputation as a retail and community hot spot. Business owners and community members on Capitol Hill can feel estranged from their local police precinct due to a lack of consistent presence and outreach. Calls to 911 often result in long wait times, which means people are often left to respond to timely issues – such as an individual sleeping outside a storefront in the morning – on their own.”

KOMO News was able to talk with some of the business owners in the area who are also members of CHBA. Jon Milazzo told the news outlet that in the last five years, “we’ve gone from a little bit of riffraff, a little bit of theft, to massive theft, people on drugs, people being violent, people yelling at us all day long.” He said his staff was scared. The business is now closing three hours earlier because of safety concerns, Milazzo added, “It’s not for us the small business owners to take on and try to fix ourselves.”

CHBA is requesting a mobile police precinct to supplement the East Precinct, more patrols at Cal Anderson Park and more police at the precinct. However, these may be declined due to a massive staffing crisis in the Seattle Police Department (SPD). SPD is currently at its lowest staffing level in more than 30 years.

Another business owner, Russell Normann, said: “The police department said ‘hire your own security, we are just not available to take calls.’ The violence is key – it’s gone from being a sporadic thing to being a regular thing.”

The said location is the site of Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), a self-declared autonomous region that emerged in the city in June 2020. Seattle has settled a multi-million-dollar lawsuit with business owners who claimed the CHAZ violated their constitutional rights and caused damage to their property. (Related: Flashback: GoFundMe allowed support for CHAZ/CHOP zone in Seattle even after murders.)

CHAZ was established by protesters in response to the killing of George Floyd, a black American man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The zone encompassed six city blocks, including the area surrounding the East Precinct, which was abandoned on June 8, 2020, when all the police left the area and turned over to Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters and became the CHAZ.

The CHBA also asked the city to look for grants to fund security costs for businesses in Capitol Hill because the costs of private security are prohibitive for many small business owners. The CHBA is asking the city to explore grant funding to help pay for security costs for businesses in the neighborhood. “While the City works hard to recruit and retain its next generation of SPD officers, businesses struggle to respond to security concerns on their own. Additional investments in security infrastructure would equip businesses with the tools to deter some of the issues they experience consistently,” the letter pointed out.

“We need immediate action from the city. I believe at this point, we have lives and jobs at stake,” Normann said. The CHBA’s letter also includes recommendations about graffiti abatement, trash cleanup, pedestrian and cyclist safety improvements and recommendations for Cal Anderson Park.

Man dies in Capitol Hill Station stabbing incident

Meanwhile, crimes continue to take place in the area despite the presence of a big crowd in a public space. SPD officers found a 37-year-old man stabbed inside the Capitol Hill Link light rail station in Seattle on Saturday evening, May 11. Crowds headed to the Seattle Mariners game and a Lumen Event Center concert filled the station at the time of the stabbing.

Seattle Fire Department, which was the first to respond, treated the victim at the scene. According to public information officer David Cuerpo, he was later transported to Harborview Medical Center where he was pronounced dead despite the life-saving efforts.

The male suspect reportedly fled and has not been identified. There were no immediate reported arrests. The SPD said it was working to determine what led to the deadly assault.

Capitol Hill Station is to remain closed indefinitely during the investigation.

Visit Violence.news to read more stories like this.

Watch the video below where a small business owner defended his store from BLM protesters back in 2020 in CHAZ, Seattle.

This video is from the Soberthoughts1 channel on Brighteon.com.