Seattle businesses in former 'CHAZ' complain of rampant violence after city abandoned area to BLM, Antifa militants in 2020

A group of business owners in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, the site of the deadly Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in 2020, are asking the city to address spiking crime, including rampant vandalism and public drug use.

Last year, Victoria Beach, chair of the Seattle Police Department African American Community Advisory Council and a lifelong resident of the area, said amid a spike in murders that she traces the increase in violence back to the 2020 riots, when six square blocks of the neighborhood were abandoned by city officials and turned over to Antifa and BLM rioters and became the CHAZ. The Capitol Hill Business Alliance (CHBA) said in a letter sent to Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office that the condition of the neighborhood is a "deterrent" to visitors.

The letter stated, “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," the letter continued.

One of the business owners Jon Milazzo, told KOMO News, "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. Our staff is 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.

The group is requesting a mobile police precinct to supplement the East Precinct, more patrols at Cal Anderson Park, and more police at the precinct, all of which is unlikely due to a massive staffing crisis in the department that began after an exodus of officers after the city council supported defunding in 2020. The Seattle Police Department is currently at its lowest staffing levels in more than 30 years.

Another business owner, Russell Normann, told the outlet, “The police department said ‘hire your own security, we are just not available to take calls'," a cost that is usually prohibitively expensive for many small business owners. He added, “The violence is key – it’s gone from being a sporadic thing to being a regular thing.”

The CHBA also asked the city to look for grants to fund security costs for businesses in Capitol Hill. 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.

Six people were shot in the autonomous zone and two of them were killed, all of them black teens. Rapes, robberies, and murders spiked 250 percent, according to the SPD at the time. Families of the victims have also been successful in suing the city.

Beach said she believes criminals still view the neighborhood as a lawless area where crime is tolerated or ignored even almost four years after the CHAZ. “It’s a huge heartache. I think about my parents, my grandparents, their minds would be blown over this." Last year, Seattle broke its previous all-time-high homicide record.