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Horace Lorenzo Anderson, Jr.
The King County Prosecutor has reached a conviction in one of the 2020 Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone murders but the victim’s mother says this wasn’t the justice she was seeking.
“They want to drown what happened in the CHOP out,” Donnitta Marie Sinclair tells CHS.
Thursday, prosecutors reached a deal with attorneys for Marcel Long, the teen who gunned down 19-year-old Horace Lorenzo Anderson, Jr. on the edge of CHOP in June 2020, to plead guilty to a reduced charge of second degree murder.
“There is never a guarantee of what a jury will do, even in a case such as this one,” a statement from Prosecutor Leesa Manion’s office reads. “Today’s guilty plea and the upcoming sentencing ensures that Mr. Long will have clear accountability for this murder conviction.”
Long’s trial was set to begin later this month.
Prosecutors say Long, then 18, shot and killed Anderson at 10th and Pine in a June 2020 fracas after what witnesses said was a night of gambling and fireworks as crowds gathered and the CHOP zone took shape amid Black Lives Matter demonstrations, community meetings and film screenings, and art. Continue reading →
A panel representing community, Seattle Police, and neighborhood businesses and organizations analyzing the 2020 protests in Seattle and the flawed police response to the waves of demonstrations and unrest that embroiled the city and made Capitol Hill a flashpoint in the Black Lives Matter and police reform movements has concluded its work with a call for city leaders to issue “a sincere, public apology.”
“Panelists agreed on the importance of rebuilding trust and understanding between community and police to discourage the othering and dehumanization of each group by the other,” the report reads. “Of particular importance was emphasizing differentiation of crowd members and avoiding assumptions about crowds as monoliths, especially where this created unwarranted defensiveness and fear in SPD.”
The final report from the Office of Inspector General for Public Safety-led group was issued last week and concludes a multi-year examination that broke the protest periods into four waves starting with the initial flash as the city joined with protests around the country over the police killing of George Floyd.
While the previous reports focused on the establishment of the occupied protest area on Capitol Hill and the abandonment of the East Precinct, the new report looks at how the police response changed after the East Precinct was “reestablished” and covers three key dates of protest and police response in the period from July 3rd to October, 2020:
On July 25th, SPD reported 140 uses of force during the 11-hour protest as police and protestors pushed back and forth along Pine Street.
On September 7th, SPD pushed protestors from the SPOG headquarters on 4th Avenue South to Judkins Park, a 90-minute interaction resulting in 56 reported uses of force by SPD.
On September 23rd, SPD reported 45 uses of force during the four-hour protest as police pushed protestors away from the East Precinct.
The conclusions? Seattle Police made the same mistakes in its heavy-handed, overly dangerous crowd control strategies and response with communication failures playing what the panel said were especially large parts in the damaging events as protesters fought back and set fires in solidarity with crackdowns in Portland. Continue reading →
Have the wounds from the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and CHOP’s time on Capitol Hill healed?
This weekend, playwright and University of Washington professor Nikki Yeboah’s work examining the aftermath of the protests will take the stage with Sound Theatre Company’s reading of 11th & Pine at the neighborhood’s Erickson Theatre:
Several years after the 2020 protests against police violence that ushered in a racial awakening across the nation, a deposed protest leader sends out a call to fellow activists. Her goal? To reconstruct the occupation she led in her city. As they relive moments both utopian and excruciating, the activists find the task of explaining what happened is not so simple. Did they succeed? Did they fail? How will they be remembered? Meanwhile, old tensions resurface and the group contends with powerful opponents who want to tell the story in their own way. Based on interviews with Seattle’s Capitol Hill Occupied Protestors, 11TH & PINE explores the impact of organized protest, asking “can we make a difference, and if so, at what cost?”
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Fernandez (Image: CHS)
Nikolas Fernandez, the brother of an East Precinct cop charged with first degree assault for the June 7, 2020 shooting that injured a protester in the middle of a Black Lives Matter demonstrations at 11th and Pine, has reached a plea deal on a lesser charge with the King County Prosecutor’s office.
ProsecutorLeesa Manion announced the deal for Fernandez to plead guilty to reckless driving in a Friday message to her staff saying that the the deal does not “diminish the understandable fear of the crowd that day or minimize the impact the defendant’s behavior/actions had on the victim.”
From Fernandez’s plea deal statement
“In June 2020, our office charged a man with Assault in the First Degree for driving into a closed street during a demonstration in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and firing one shot at a man who punched him,” Manion writes. “After a careful and thorough follow-up investigation, we made the decision to resolve this case with a plea to Reckless Driving. Earlier this week, our office discussed our decision with the victim and witnesses. There is no doubt that the victim in this case felt scared when he saw the defendant driving down the closed street. The video evidence in this case shows that he and other protestors responded in a way that they thought was necessary to protect themselves and others.”
Under the deal, Fernandez has agreed to a sentence of 24 months probation, a 30-day driver’s license suspension, plus “mandatory court costs and fines.” The reckless driving charge carries a maximum sentence of 364 days in jail and a $5,000 fine.
The full “Case Resolution” message to her office is below.
Fernandez’s trial had been repeatedly delayed. The case was scheduled to come to trial a year ago in February 2022 after delays caused by the by the assignment of a new prosecutor and the “large number of outstanding interviews” required to try the case. The deal came with the latest trial date in April approaching. Fernandez has been free on $150,000 bail.
Fernandez was charged with first degree assault for the shooting that wounded protester Dan Gregory and set off panic in the tightly packed crowd outside the East Precinct in the early days of the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest. In 2021, CHS reported on Gregory’s hopes for a Carnegie Medal in recognition of his bravery that day as he tried to disarm Fernandez. Continue reading →
The City of Seattle has ended its legal battle with a group of Capitol Hill property owners and businesses that claimed the city showed “deliberate indifference” over its handling of 2020’s CHOP occupied protest in what could be a multimillion dollar settlement over thousands of missing text messages from top officials including then-Mayor Jenny Durkan, her Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, and Seattle Fire Chief Scoggins.
City Attorney Ann Davison’s office announced the settlement of the federal lawsuit in a Wednesday filing in U.S. District Court. Terms of the deal were not disclosed and the sides in the suit will have until March to bang out the final agreement, according to Davison’s filing.
The city has said Capitol Hill-based developer and property manager Hunters Capital was seeking $2.9 million in damages in the case while 12th and Pine’s Richmark Label is seeking $90,000 for lost business. Dollar totals for the other plaintiffs were not disclosed in the course of the multi-year legal fight after the lawsuit was first filed in June of 2020.
UPDATE 2/17/2022:KOMO reports the city has agreed to pay $3,650,000 in the case — including $600,000 in legal fees for the representation for the plaintiffs, the law firm of Morgan, Lewis and Bockius.
The deal comes as Davison was preparing for a trial in the case under heavy sanctions after a federal judge agreed with the plaintiffs that the city had not properly retained crucial text message records from the time of the Black Lives Matter protests and camps on Capitol Hill.
In the “Spoliation of Evidence” motion brought by the collection of Cal Anderson Park-area property owners and businesses, lawyers said that a combination of factory resets, 30-day auto deletions, and manual deletions wiped away key evidence and that forensic efforts to recreate some of the communication between officials from that summer of 2020 were inadequate. The judge agreed. Continue reading →
The trial of Nikolas Fernandez has again been delayed.
The King County Prosecutor’s office said earlier this month it needed more time to prepare its case against Fernandez in the June 7, 2020 shooting that injured a protester in the middle of a Black Lives Matter demonstrations at 11th and Pine.
The trial is now slated for a late February start.
It has been a long path to justice in the shooting. The case was supposed to come to trial a year ago in February 2022 after delays caused by the by the assignment of a new prosecutor and the “large number of outstanding interviews” required to try the case. Continue reading →
It has been more than two years since Nikolas Fernandez opened fire in the middle of a Black Lives Matter protest at 11th and Pine. His trial is now scheduled for January 2023.
Fernandez is charged with first degree assault for the shooting that wounded protester Dan Gregory and set off panic in the tightly packed crowd outside the East Precinct in the early days of the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest.
A year ago, CHS reported here on Gregory’s hopes for a Carnegie Medal in recognition of his bravery that day as he tried to disarm the brother of an East Precinct officer who had driven into the demonstration crowd. Last November, Fernandez’s trial was set to begin in February 2022 after delays caused by the by the assignment of a new prosecutor and the “large number of outstanding interviews” required to try the case. Continue reading →
Among the 34 recommendations produced in the latest in a series of planned reports from the Office of Inspector General for Public Safety examining City Hall and the Seattle Police Department’s flawed response to the 2020’s Black Lives Matter and anti-police protests and the formation of CHOP on Capitol Hill, there is one missing recommendation that the day by day examination of the actions from leaders like then-Mayor Jenny Durkan and Chief Carmen Best illustrates very clearly.
Do not lie.
The report, issued last week, is the third in a planned five “wave” series from a 23-member community panel including Capitol Hill community and business members as well as SPD personnel convened to examine the period before, during, and after the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest and produce recommendations for the city and SPD.
Wave 1 (May 29 – June 1), comprises the period from the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis to the first set of demonstrations in Seattle, mainly in Downtown Seattle. CHS report
Wave 2 (June 2 – June 7) includes events that occurred before the leaving of the East Precinct by SPD. During this period, the main demonstrations and confrontations shifted from Downtown to the East Precinct. CHS report
Wave 3 (June 8 – July 2) includes events that occurred during the existence of the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) and Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ).
Wave 4 (July 3 – Oct 6) includes events after the East Precinct was reestablished.
Wave 5 (Oct 6 to the end of 2020) includes events after the creation by SPD Interim Chief of Police Adrian Diaz of the Community Response Group, tasked specifically with responding to demonstrations, among other things.
The new “Wave 3” report documents a cloud of “deception,” “intentional manipulation of protestor fear,” and irresponsible acts from the mayor down to SPD that eroded trust and made it nearly impossible for the city to effectively communicate with protesters like the June 10th, 2020 press conference in which officials repeated unsubstantiated lies about the protest area. The panel’s report says acts like that set the stage for critical communication errors by the city and mistrust by the community and protesters that contributed to the violent and dangerous conditions that developed around the protest area, leading to deadly shootings, and the July police sweep that ended the protest camp, burying important issues around race and equity that remain unaddressed. Continue reading →
Lawyers for the group of Capitol Hill real estate developers, property owners, and businesses suing the City of Seattle over its handling of the 2020 CHOP protests are asking a judge to bring the federal lawsuit to an end and rule in their favor in what could be a multimillion judgement over thousands of missing text messages from top officials including then-Mayor Jenny Durkan, her Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, and Seattle Fire Chief Scoggins.
In the “Spoliation of Evidence” motion filed this week, lawyers representing the group say that revelations about the deleted texts should result in sanctions against the city in the case and either require an “adverse inference” instruction to the jury at trial and “monetary sanctions,” or an immediate end to the suit in a default judgment for the plaintiffs.
In the motion, lawyers representing the property owners and businesses claiming more than $3 million damages from the summer 2020 protest camp over “due process and takings violations, negligence, and nuisance resulting in business loss, property damage, and other harms” say their claims “depend on evidence such as communications between city policymakers.”
“Yet Plaintiffs will never be able to access many of these critical communications because Seattle Mayor Durkan, Police Chief Best, Fire Chief Scoggins, and four other key officials deleted their text messages, well after this case began and in blatant disregard of their duties as public officials to preserve their texts,” lawyers from the Morgan, Lewis and Bockius firm representing the group write. “The City’s explanation for the delay and why the officials deleted the texts—using factory resets, 30-day auto deletions, and manual deletions—are either non- existent or incredible.”
UPDATE 1:45 PM: The Seattle City Attorney’s office has immediately fired back in the case not by disputing the allegations about the deleted texts from the mayor and her top officials — which City Attorney Ann Davison’s office says will come — but by accusing the real estate and business owner group of also intentionally deleting texts and emails. **More at the end of this report **
UPDATE 9/30/2022 8:45 AM: NBC has reviewed the forensic analysis submitted to the court by the plaintiffs and reports that 191 texts were manually deleted from Durkan’s phone. NBC reports Durkan said through a spokesperson’s statement that “most of her texts, which were ‘mostly innocuous and irrelevant,’ were recovered.” Durkan previously denied intentionally deleting any text messages.
Thanks to a whistleblower, revelations about the missing texts from city officials grew in the months following CHOP amid investigations into the protests and the city’s response to the Black Lives Matter and anti-police movements as officials and technical teams at City Hall changed their stories and more evidence was recovered. Even two years later, new evidence continues to come to light including revelations that Durkan and Best were more closely involved with the decision to abandon Capitol Hill’s East Precinct headquarters than had previously been disclosed.
In the new motion in the lawsuit brought by the collection of Cal Anderson Park-area property owners and businesses, lawyers say that a combination of factory resets, 30-day auto deletions, and manual deletions wiped away key evidence and that forensic efforts to recreate some of the communication between officials from that summer of 2020 are inadequate. Continue reading →
A film that documents the rise of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone and the fall of CHOP is in search of a distribution deal.
Filmmaker Jefferson Martin Elliott showed his documentary Our Block as part of the recent Local Sightings Film Festival at the Northwest Film Forum — the 12th Ave theater and education complex that shares the block with the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct headquarters that was a core part of the 2020 Black Lives Matter and anti-police protests that the three-part series documents.
“The way I got involved was I just wanted to be involved with the march. I saw what was happening, I had the time available, I just wanted to be there,” said Elliott, who lived in the University District at the time.
As an independent filmmaker, Elliott says he always carries his camera, and he began documenting the events as they unfolded. After several days of attending the Black Lives Matter marches, protesters would reach out to have their voices heard, which led to interviews.
The 55-minute documentary captures one version of the story of that summer — a story that almost wasn’t told. Continue reading →
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