SEATTLE — The city of Seattle has agreed to pay $3.65 million to settle a lawsuit filed by businesses disrupted during the Capitol Hill Organized Protests, an amount that includes $600,000 in penalties for the deletion of thousands of text messages by the former mayor, police chief and other high-ranking officials.
The Seattle City Attorney’s Office released the settlement amount Friday afternoon, two days after The Seattle Times first reported news of the agreement.
More than a dozen businesses and residents, led by the investment group Hunters Capital, sued the city over its handling of the three-week CHOP protests, claiming the city’s decision to tolerate — and in some cases aid — the closure of an eight-block section of Capitol Hill hurt their businesses.
The city’s efforts to defend itself were hamstrung because former Mayor Jenny Durkan, former police Chief Carmen Best, Fire Chief Harold Scoggins and a handful of other high-ranking city officials deleted tens of thousands of text messages likely relevant to CHOP, including the decision that the Seattle Police Department abandon its East Precinct and curtail law enforcement inside the protest zone in June 2020.
A federal judge sanctioned the city for destroying evidence, finding Durkan’s excuses “strained credibility” and determining that Best deleted more than 27,000 texts messages by hand.
The judge found significant evidence the destruction of CHOP evidence was intentional and that officials tried for months to hide the deletions from opposing attorneys.
In a statement accompanying the release of the settlement amount, City Attorney Anne Davison said, “I am pleased that we were able to resolve this matter and turn a page from a difficult period in the city’s history.”
Angelo Calfo, one of the attorneys representing the businesses, said the businesses and residents of Capitol Hill “will now be compensated for the City’s mishandling of CHOP that resulted in a significant increase in crime and even loss of life.”
“As the federal court judge found, our clients’ lawsuit exposed the cover-up of its highest ranking officials who destroyed their text communications with each other,” Calfo said.
While the Black Lives Matter protests were mostly peaceful, the retreat of law enforcement from Capitol Hill preceded vandalism and two fatal shootings, including the death of 19-year-old Lorenzo Anderson, who bled to death after being rushed to a hospital in the back of a pickup because police and firefighters refused to respond to the incident.
The city settled a lawsuit by Anderson’s father for $500,000. The shooting was not related to the protests, but involved a long-standing dispute between Anderson and another young man, who was later arrested.
The other fatal shooting involved a stolen vehicle and led to the shutdown of CHOP on June 28, 2020. The crime has never been solved; police detectives did not arrive to secure the scene or talk to witnesses for several hours, according to reports.
The lawsuit’s cost to Seattle citizens likely will increase, as the city hired outside attorneys to defend the litigation. City attorney’s spokesperson Marina Udodik said the office could not immediately provide an accounting of legal fees paid to those attorneys.
The CHOP grew out of protests over the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, a killing that brought about a reckoning in Seattle and nationwide. A series of clashes between Black Lives Matter protesters and police prompted Seattle officials to withdraw officers from its precinct on Capitol Hill, and thousands of people flooded the area surrounding nearby Cal Anderson Park. Roads were blocked off — with help from the city — and encampments sprang up in the park.
Meanwhile, complaints arose from residents and some local businesses that said they were cut off from customers, who were inconvenienced or intimidated by the gathering and lack of law enforcement protection.
These businesses alleged in the June 2020 lawsuit that their civil rights were violated by the city’s decision not to disband the protest zone and, in some ways, help keep it alive by providing street barricades and sanitation stations.
