Ultimately, the problem of violence—and a dangerously naive understanding of policing—doomed the CHAZ. Over its 24-day history, the autonomous zone saw two gun homicides and four additional shooting victims. All the identified victims were black men—precisely the demographic for whom the CHAZ had claimed to offer protection. In the absence of a legitimate police force, armed criminal gangs and untrained anarchist paramilitaries filled the void. Almost every night, gunshots rang through the streets. The first homicide victim was killed in an outburst of gang violence; the second, reportedly unarmed and joyriding in a stolen car, was gunned down by the “CHAZ security force.”
In the end, the homicide rate in the CHAZ turned out to be 1,216 per 100,000—nearly 50 times greater than Chicago’s. Though that’s obviously not a strict apples-to-apples comparison—the small sample size of the CHAZ creates an exaggerated statistical effect—it’s instructive nonetheless, as it invalidates the entire premise of the autonomous zone. By instituting a “police-free zone,” the CHAZ didn’t become peaceable; it became lawless, brutish, and violent.
As the national media conducts its autopsy of the CHAZ, one tragic detail has escaped notice: the police department’s East Precinct building, which radicals saw as a symbol of “white supremacy,” was originally constructed under the leadership of Seattle’s first African-American city councilman, Sam Smith, who wanted to provide faster response times to the city’s Central District, where black residents had demanded greater police protection. The irony is cutting: Smith, who grew up in the Deep South during Jim Crow, saw policing as a public service; today, college-educated, white radicals see policing as an evil that must be abolished, whatever the consequences for African-Americans.
