Life in a Cop-free Zone

Burglaries? Arson? Calling the cops is a sign of privilege, or something.

First up… Seattle man living in CHOP sounds alarms over safety: ‘We’re sitting ducks in here’.

“We are just sitting ducks all day,” Matthew Ploszaj told Seattle-based KIRO 7. “Now every criminal in the city knows they can come into this area, and they can do anything they want, as long as it isn’t life-threatening. And the police won’t come in to do anything about it.”

Ploszaj said he called 911 after witnessing a burglar break into his courtyard and steal a bike, the outlet reported. Then he said the dispatcher told him there was “nothing we can do” unless someone’s life is in danger.

Then there is arson. “Nobody showed up”: 911 calls bring no response after break in at auto shop near Capitol Hill protest zone.

They caught a guy who tried to burn down their business. They managed to put the fire out, but they are inside CHOP.

“At some point he tried to cut me with a box cutter,” Mason said. He pointed to a large rip on his jeans from where the knife cut just his pants.

McDermott said he kept trying to call 911

“I’m told 19 times,” he said. “They alluded they were sending someone… finally said they weren’t going to send somebody,” McDermott said.

“I don’t know what to expect next. If you can’t call the police department, you can’t call the fire department to respond, what do you have?” McDermott said.

Cops wouldn’t come. The mob descended and they had to let the guy go. Justice? What’s that? (Hat tip to Wirecutter.)

The people who live in CHAZ CHOP (when did they change the name?) didn’t get a vote on being in a cop-free zone. They just have to live with the conditions that prevail. Which is pretty much being left on your own. (see the quote from Hobbes’ The Leviathan after the break.) And CHOP does refer to the The Reign of Terror in France in 1793, in which 17,000 people were guillotined.

Hobbes was describing in the relative section The Leviathan, a time when society cannot provide for security, or as he stated it: “During the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe.” When that condition exists, you are in a state of nature, which he described as War (or Warre in the vernacular of his time.)

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.