The west was wild again. With the so-called “Capital Hill Occupy Protest” (CHOP) being the source of numerous accounts of arson, assaults, burglaries, property destruction, a rape, and three shootings, it’s no wonder that Seattle’s mayor, Jenny Durkan (D) had finally had enough of the “summer of love” and vowed to dismantle the “autonomous zone.” But all of that went unnoticed by ABC, CBS, and NBC on Tuesday, even though the latest shooting occurred before their morning shows went to air.
As NewsBusters reported on Monday, the broadcast networks weren’t interested in covering the multiple shootings that had happened at the so-called “mostly peaceful protest.” One of the shootings had left a black teenager dead.
But while these national news outlets were trying to hide the violence from their viewers, their local affiliates were keeping people informed. As KING 5, an NBC affiliate, reported Tuesday:
A man in his 30s was injured Tuesday morning in the third shooting since Saturday near the "Capitol Hill Organized Protest" zone, also known as CHOP.
The Seattle Police Department (SPD) started to receive 911 calls at 4:37 a.m. about a man that had been shot in the 1100 block of East Denny Way, according to a SPD Blotter post. The location is by the northeast corner of Cal Anderson Park, which is near the CHOP.
Adding: “The victim, who was shot in the calf, met officers and Seattle fire medics at the designated area outside of the CHOP, according to the SPD. Police said the victim refused to provide any information about the shooting or a suspect description.”
The shootings were a wakeup call to Mayor Durkan, who once mused to CNN’s Chris Cuomo that CHOP would bring a “summer of love” to the rainy city. “But the city will not allow for gun violence to continue in the evenings around Capital Hill. And if individuals continue to remain at the park, we will be looking at additional steps to ensure community safety,” she declared at a Monday press conference.
But so far, her plan had few details aside from wanting to let the occupiers take back the streets during the day and have them go home at night, with Seattle police moving back into the East Precinct. But as one mask-clad, radical occupier ominously told KING 5 when asked about what would happen if police tried to move back into the abandoned precinct, “good luck.”
The closest any of the networks came to mentioning Seattle was CBS This Morning via transportation correspondent Kris Van Cleave, who mentioned that overnight people had tried to set up a similar lawless zone just outside the White House:
Several demonstrators tried to set up barriers outside the White House, and declared what they called ‘the Black House Autonomous Zone. The acronym BHAZ was spray-painted on the historic St. John’s Church across from the White House. It was an apparent reference to a similar space in Seattle that President Trump railed against in his Tulsa speech.
CBS will note that Trump “railed against” such zones but refused to mention the shootings, killing, rape, and other crimes found there. The state of the press is disgusting.
