In the last week, protesters in Minneapolis began putting up barricades to create checkpoints that bar federal immigration officers from entering certain neighborhoods. It is all too familiar to those of us who remember what the mayor in 2020 called “the Summer of Love” in Seattle and the establishment of an autonomous area known as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP). Ironically, these barricades are being set up after a jury ruled against the City of Seattle for negligence after the killing of 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. in CHOP.

The self-declared anarchist enclave was originally called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) but was later renamed the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP).

In 2020, we discussed the prospect of tortious liability for the city, which abandoned the Seattle Police Department (SPD) East Precinct to the mob and stood by as CHOP declared itself the sole authority in its seized area. As I noted in the column, “If Seattle gets chopped in court, it will be due not to a failure of government but to a failure to govern.”

Seattle-based ice cream company, Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream, and other businesses sued the city.

While first supporting the autonomous zone as part of a “summer of love,” Democratic politicians like then-Mayor Jenny Durkan later distanced themselves from the massive damage and crime in the zone.

The Mays lawsuit included not only the city but former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best and Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins.

The jury awarded the Mays family more than $30 million in damages — $4 million to the estate of Mays Jr. and $26 million to Mays Sr., according to The Seattle Times.

Mays Jr. was visiting Seattle from San Diego when he went to the area to join the protests. He was later shot and the police failed to respond for five hours due to the limits on entry into CHOP. At that point, the crime scene was hopelessly corrupted.

Here is the complaint: Complaint Antonio Mays, Jr.