Seattle Police Investigate New Shooting Near Autonomous Zone

Seattle police on Tuesday said they were investigating a third shooting in the Capitol Hill neighborhood near the city’s “autonomous zone,” a day after the mayor vowed to dismantle the encampment set up by anti-racism protesters.

Police tweeted the shooting took place on the edge of the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), or Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, where demonstrators set up a police-free zone in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody.

A man was taken to Harborview Medical Center at 5 a.m. after being shot near Cal Anderson Park and was in satisfactory condition, hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg said. Police did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

There have been no reports indicating that the shooting on the edge of Cal Anderson Park was related to the occupation zone.

The incident was the third shooting in the area in around 72 hours, police said.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, facing local and national pressure to crack down on the protests, said on Monday officials would move to wind down the blocks-long, autonomous zone set up two weeks ago. Protesters took over several blocks around the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct building, which police vacated. She did not give a deadline but said officers would soon move back to the precinct.

President Donald Trump on Saturday said the occupation was an example of what “radical left Democrats” allowed in the United States and offered to help end the “anarchist” protest “in an hour or less.”

On Tuesday, he tweeted that there would never be an “autonomous zone” in Washington D.C. and any attempt to establish one “will be met with serious force!”

Twitter Inc on Tuesday placed a warning notice on the tweet because it violated its policy against abusive behavior.

Protests and demonstrations against police brutality have spread around the world since George Floyd, a Black man, died after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes while detaining him in Minneapolis on May 25.

Protesters have also demanded authorities take down monuments honoring pro-slavery Confederate figures and the architects of Europe’s colonies.

(Reporting Andrew Hay; additional reporting by Maria Ponnezhath and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru, Editing by Bill Tarrant and Aurora Ellis)