Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best told ABC News on Friday that the department did not “abandon the precinct” in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district despite removing all officers from the area.
Protesters in Seattle this week took control of a multi-block area and turned it into an “autonomous police-free zone,” which Best told “Good Morning America” she is “very angry about,” in an interview on Friday. She added that she supports free speech but claimed “this is not that.”
Best said the department "did not — for clarification — abandon the precinct,” but admitted, "We did have to remove some personnel for a short period of time, and then it became unsafe.”
She added, "We're currently working to get our officers back into the facility.”
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said on Thursday: "The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone #CHAZ is not a lawless wasteland of anarchist insurrection - it is a peaceful expression of our community's collective grief and their desire to build a better world," Durkan said.
Best said on Friday that she doesn’t “get involved in the politics” of Seattle.
"I'm just concerned about making sure that I'm able to get my officers back into the precinct so that they can respond to calls for service," Best said. "We need to have officers responding to calls in a timely fashion and with the occupation, we're not able to do so in a timely way. It's taking us three times the amount of time for priority-one calls in the area and almost an hour for priority-two calls."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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