A federal judge has dealt a blow to the legal case of a 11th Ave restaurant suing the City of Seattle over what it says was neglect and rights violations as it allowed the Capitol Hill protest zone to grow around the business.
The judge’s decisions this week tossed one of the four complaints brought by Korean fast casual joint Oma Bap and threw another two up for possible appeal in the case. Continue reading
Horace Lorenzo Anderson, Jr.The man who shot and killed 19-year-old Horace Lorenzo Anderson, Jr. on the edge of CHOP in June 2020 was sentenced to just over 14 years in prison Friday.
Marcel Long, also a teen at the time of the murder, will have credit for time served and also will serve three years in community custody, according to the King County Prosecutor’s office.
CHS reported here in May on the deal reached for Long to plead guilty to a reduced charge of second degree murder for the 2020 killing.
“There is never a guarantee of what will happen at a trial, even in a case such as this one,” the office said Friday about the deal and the judge’s decision. “Thursday’s sentencing for Murder in the Second Degree – a Class A felony – ensures that Mr. Long will have clear accountability.” Continue reading
Former Chief Best at a press conference at CHOP in the summer of 2020 (Image: CHS)
Former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best will not have to answer for dishonest and inaccurate statements made during CHOP that an investigation says inflamed the volatile situation around the 2020 protest camp on Capitol Hill that left two teenagers murdered and a string of litigation that continues three years later.
In a memo on the Seattle Office of Police Accountability’s findings in its investigation of the chief’s role in the public safety breakdown around the protests, Mayor Bruce Harrell joined in criticism of Best for making untrue statements to the public but said her refusal to participate in the OPA investigation prevented “a full assessment of the propriety of her actions during an important moment in Seattle history.”
“It is in the interests of the public and the City of Seattle to fully understand the events and the decision-making process that surrounded the protests and public demonstrations that occurred during the summer of 2020,” the Harrell memo reads. “The Executive believes that public employees who have had the honor to serve the City in such leadership positions should assist in establishing a review and record with the hopes of saving lives, reducing property destruction and loss, and addressing the erosion of public trust.” Continue reading
The memorial to Lorenzo Anderson who was gunned down in front of Molly Moon’s during CHOP
One of Seattle’s most progressive small businesses has sued the city over its actions around the CHOP occupied protest that grew from the 2020 Black Lives Matter and George Floyd murder unrest into a dangerous camp that shut down blocks of Capitol Hill’s Pike/Pine core and left two teens shot to death including 19-year-old Lorenzo Anderson who was gunned down in the street in front of the ice cream shop behind the suit.
The Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream LLC v. City of Seattle case was filed this week in federal court.
It is being brought forward by the law firm of Morgan, Lewis and Bockius, the same firm that won a $3.6 million settlement with the city earlier this year on behalf of a slate of Capitol Hill property owners and businesses that sued over “deliberate indifference” from former Mayor Jenny Durkan, the Seattle Police Department and then-Chief Carmen Best, Seattle Fire, and the rest of City Hall over the handling of the camp that took over the streets around Cal Anderson Park in June 2020.
It is not clear why Molly Moon’s was not part of the previous lawsuit. CHS has asked the law firm and owner Molly Moon Neitzel for more details on the new filing.
Filed on the three-year anniversary of the protest camp’s formation, the lawsuit seemingly puts Molly Moon’s in position of demanding the city should have shut down the CHOP protests.
But the complaint filed this week begins with a defense of the protests even as it blames the city for the disorder that followed. Continue reading
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Horace Lorenzo Anderson, Jr.
The King County Prosecutor has reached a conviction in one of the 2020 Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone murders but the victim’s mother says this wasn’t the justice she was seeking.
“They want to drown what happened in the CHOP out,” Donnitta Marie Sinclair tells CHS.
Thursday, prosecutors reached a deal with attorneys for Marcel Long, the teen who gunned down 19-year-old Horace Lorenzo Anderson, Jr. on the edge of CHOP in June 2020, to plead guilty to a reduced charge of second degree murder.
“There is never a guarantee of what a jury will do, even in a case such as this one,” a statement from Prosecutor Leesa Manion’s office reads. “Today’s guilty plea and the upcoming sentencing ensures that Mr. Long will have clear accountability for this murder conviction.”
Long’s trial was set to begin later this month.
Prosecutors say Long, then 18, shot and killed Anderson at 10th and Pine in a June 2020 fracas after what witnesses said was a night of gambling and fireworks as crowds gathered and the CHOP zone took shape amid Black Lives Matter demonstrations, community meetings and film screenings, and art. Continue reading
What July 25th, 2020 looked like on Capitol Hill
A panel representing community, Seattle Police, and neighborhood businesses and organizations analyzing the 2020 protests in Seattle and the flawed police response to the waves of demonstrations and unrest that embroiled the city and made Capitol Hill a flashpoint in the Black Lives Matter and police reform movements has concluded its work with a call for city leaders to issue “a sincere, public apology.”
“Panelists agreed on the importance of rebuilding trust and understanding between community and police to discourage the othering and dehumanization of each group by the other,” the report reads. “Of particular importance was emphasizing differentiation of crowd members and avoiding assumptions about crowds as monoliths, especially where this created unwarranted defensiveness and fear in SPD.”
The final report from the Office of Inspector General for Public Safety-led group was issued last week and concludes a multi-year examination that broke the protest periods into four waves starting with the initial flash as the city joined with protests around the country over the police killing of George Floyd.
While the previous reports focused on the establishment of the occupied protest area on Capitol Hill and the abandonment of the East Precinct, the new report looks at how the police response changed after the East Precinct was “reestablished” and covers three key dates of protest and police response in the period from July 3rd to October, 2020:
- On July 25th, SPD reported 140 uses of force during the 11-hour protest as police and protestors pushed back and forth along Pine Street.
- On September 7th, SPD pushed protestors from the SPOG headquarters on 4th Avenue South to Judkins Park, a 90-minute interaction resulting in 56 reported uses of force by SPD.
- On September 23rd, SPD reported 45 uses of force during the four-hour protest as police pushed protestors away from the East Precinct.
The conclusions? Seattle Police made the same mistakes in its heavy-handed, overly dangerous crowd control strategies and response with communication failures playing what the panel said were especially large parts in the damaging events as protesters fought back and set fires in solidarity with crackdowns in Portland. Continue reading
Have the wounds from the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and CHOP’s time on Capitol Hill healed?
This weekend, playwright and University of Washington professor Nikki Yeboah’s work examining the aftermath of the protests will take the stage with Sound Theatre Company’s reading of 11th & Pine at the neighborhood’s Erickson Theatre:
Several years after the 2020 protests against police violence that ushered in a racial awakening across the nation, a deposed protest leader sends out a call to fellow activists. Her goal? To reconstruct the occupation she led in her city. As they relive moments both utopian and excruciating, the activists find the task of explaining what happened is not so simple. Did they succeed? Did they fail? How will they be remembered? Meanwhile, old tensions resurface and the group contends with powerful opponents who want to tell the story in their own way. Based on interviews with Seattle’s Capitol Hill Occupied Protestors, 11TH & PINE explores the impact of organized protest, asking “can we make a difference, and if so, at what cost?”
The shooting scene in June 2020
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Fernandez (Image: CHS)
Nikolas Fernandez, the brother of an East Precinct cop charged with first degree assault for the June 7, 2020 shooting that injured a protester in the middle of a Black Lives Matter demonstrations at 11th and Pine, has reached a plea deal on a lesser charge with the King County Prosecutor’s office.
Prosecutor Leesa Manion announced the deal for Fernandez to plead guilty to reckless driving in a Friday message to her staff saying that the the deal does not “diminish the understandable fear of the crowd that day or minimize the impact the defendant’s behavior/actions had on the victim.”
From Fernandez’s plea deal statement
“In June 2020, our office charged a man with Assault in the First Degree for driving into a closed street during a demonstration in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and firing one shot at a man who punched him,” Manion writes. “After a careful and thorough follow-up investigation, we made the decision to resolve this case with a plea to Reckless Driving. Earlier this week, our office discussed our decision with the victim and witnesses. There is no doubt that the victim in this case felt scared when he saw the defendant driving down the closed street. The video evidence in this case shows that he and other protestors responded in a way that they thought was necessary to protect themselves and others.”
Under the deal, Fernandez has agreed to a sentence of 24 months probation, a 30-day driver’s license suspension, plus “mandatory court costs and fines.” The reckless driving charge carries a maximum sentence of 364 days in jail and a $5,000 fine.
The full “Case Resolution” message to her office is below.
Fernandez’s trial had been repeatedly delayed. The case was scheduled to come to trial a year ago in February 2022 after delays caused by the by the assignment of a new prosecutor and the “large number of outstanding interviews” required to try the case. The deal came with the latest trial date in April approaching. Fernandez has been free on $150,000 bail.
Fernandez was charged with first degree assault for the shooting that wounded protester Dan Gregory and set off panic in the tightly packed crowd outside the East Precinct in the early days of the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest. In 2021, CHS reported on Gregory’s hopes for a Carnegie Medal in recognition of his bravery that day as he tried to disarm Fernandez. Continue reading
The City of Seattle has ended its legal battle with a group of Capitol Hill property owners and businesses that claimed the city showed “deliberate indifference” over its handling of 2020’s CHOP occupied protest in what could be a multimillion dollar settlement over thousands of missing text messages from top officials including then-Mayor Jenny Durkan, her Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, and Seattle Fire Chief Scoggins.
City Attorney Ann Davison’s office announced the settlement of the federal lawsuit in a Wednesday filing in U.S. District Court. Terms of the deal were not disclosed and the sides in the suit will have until March to bang out the final agreement, according to Davison’s filing.
The city has said Capitol Hill-based developer and property manager Hunters Capital was seeking $2.9 million in damages in the case while 12th and Pine’s Richmark Label is seeking $90,000 for lost business. Dollar totals for the other plaintiffs were not disclosed in the course of the multi-year legal fight after the lawsuit was first filed in June of 2020.
The Seattle Times was first to report the settlement.
UPDATE 2/17/2022: KOMO reports the city has agreed to pay $3,650,000 in the case — including $600,000 in legal fees for the representation for the plaintiffs, the law firm of Morgan, Lewis and Bockius.
The deal comes as Davison was preparing for a trial in the case under heavy sanctions after a federal judge agreed with the plaintiffs that the city had not properly retained crucial text message records from the time of the Black Lives Matter protests and camps on Capitol Hill.
In the “Spoliation of Evidence” motion brought by the collection of Cal Anderson Park-area property owners and businesses, lawyers said that a combination of factory resets, 30-day auto deletions, and manual deletions wiped away key evidence and that forensic efforts to recreate some of the communication between officials from that summer of 2020 were inadequate. The judge agreed. Continue reading
The trial of Nikolas Fernandez has again been delayed.
The King County Prosecutor’s office said earlier this month it needed more time to prepare its case against Fernandez in the June 7, 2020 shooting that injured a protester in the middle of a Black Lives Matter demonstrations at 11th and Pine.
The trial is now slated for a late February start.
It has been a long path to justice in the shooting. The case was supposed to come to trial a year ago in February 2022 after delays caused by the by the assignment of a new prosecutor and the “large number of outstanding interviews” required to try the case. Continue reading
