There were actually three lawsuits filed against the city of Seattle in the past week, all three relating to the brief existence of the CHAZ/CHOP zone which lasted for about a month in the summer of 2020. One of those lawsuits comes from Antonio Mays, Sr. whose 16-year-old son was killed in the CHOP.

In his suit filed with Oshan & Associates this week, , says the city was well aware of the violence in the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest Zone but had abandoned it “without a working plan to provide essential services.” His 16-year-old son, Antonio Mays, Jr., was fatally shot after he had traveled there from California for what he thought was a “peaceful protest in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.”…

Former Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, D., was heavily criticized after she said the CHOP Zone had a “block party atmosphere” and felt like the “summer of love” during a television appearance in June 2020.

Mays’ lawyer says the city was “on notice” about the violence in the area, noting another young man was killed there nine days before his son’s death. The two teenagers’ deaths prompted the city to shut down the protest zone on July 1, 2020.

The city settled with the family of 19-year-old Horace Lorenzo Anderson last year, for $500,000. But even after three years, no one has been arrested in the death of Antonio Mays Jr. The lawsuit brought by Mays also targets former Mayor Jenny Durkan and socialist city council member Kshama Sawant, both of whom expressed support for the CHOP.

Two other lawsuits were filed this week by businesses in the area. One by  Hugo Properties LLC and the other by Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream. The lawsuit by Molly Moon’s is particularly interesting.

In the federal lawsuit filed Wednesday, Molly Moon’s stated its constitutional rights were “overrun” by the city’s decision to “abandon” the 10-block area of Capitol Hill overtaken by protesters. The ice cream maker is accusing the city of materially supporting and encouraging “a hostile occupation of that neighborhood.”

“This lawsuit does not seek to undermine CHOP participants’ message or present a counter message,” the lawsuit, acquired by KIRO Newsradio, read. “Rather, this lawsuit is about the plaintiff’s constitutional and other legal rights, of which were overrun by the City of Seattle’s decision to abandon and close off an entire city neighborhood, leaving it unchecked by the police, unserved by fire and emergency health services, and inaccessible to the public at large, and then materially support and encourage a hostile occupation of that neighborhood. The City’s decision subjected businesses, employees, and residents of that neighborhood to extensive property damage, public safety dangers, and an inability to use and access their properties.”

The lawsuit specifically blames the city for cutting the neighborhood off from basic public safety, i.e. the police.

The City’s conduct also resulted in the elimination of basic public safety within CHOP and nearby areas. For example, the City enacted a policy under which police would not enter the CHOP area except during “mass casualties,” and, even in those situations, the response was, at best, muted and late. After a fatal shooting in the early morning of June 20, 2020, for example, officers did not even approach the area of the shooting until approximately twenty minutes after the shooting, and no professional medical response was available. At other times, even during life-and-death emergencies, the police acquiesced to demands from CHOP participants that they abandon the area. The City acknowledged the serious safety issues it created, in particular noting that there were “dangerous conditions” at night, but the City nonetheless chose to maintain its policy of providing resources and support to the CHOP occupiers.

The lawsuit goes into a lot more detail about conditions inside the CHOP and the fact that Mayor Durkan was fully aware of the conditions and yet refused to do anything about them despite being warned by then-police chief Carmen Best that the area was out of control.

So, granted, the CHAZ/CHOP was a disaster and the city and the former mayor deserve to be sued. But here’s the catch when it comes to Molly Moon’s lawsuit. As Jason Rantz pointed out, Molly Moon’s was explicitly a police no-go zone and signaled its support for defunding the police on its website.

After CHOP, the uber-left Molly Moon’s Ice Cream owner made it clear and didn’t support cops. This sign was posted to tell cops to not enter their shop, while declaring online that it supported divesting funds from Seattle Police. Now they’re suing over Antifa and BLM activism? https://t.co/AiZeMs9xWQ pic.twitter.com/lVo5wgzF19

— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) June 9, 2023

Here’s a local news report from July 2020, about a week after police finally closed the CHOP. The owner claims her “black and brown employees” felt “unsafe” because of all of the police who came into the shop while cleaning up the CHOP.

An attorney not involved in the lawsuit summed it up:

“On one hand, they complain about insufficient police protection, and on the other hand, they wouldn’t allow police officers into their shop,” Attorney Mark Lindquist said. Lindquist is not involved in this case but has consulted on, as well as filed similar lawsuits against the city of Seattle over CHOP.

“This is not a case that’s ever going to get to a jury. This is a case that’s going to be resolved in mediation,” Lindquist added, “The jurors might shake their heads over the irony of a business refusing to let police officers into their shop and yet complaining about insufficient police protection, in the end, the suit’s about more than that, and I think they win.”

He’s probably right. Molly Moon and her shop had a right to police protection even if she turns out to be an ungrateful hypocrite who takes that protection for granted the moment it resumes.