Seattle protesters have taken over a a six-block autonomous zone made up of armed citizen patrols, called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) with wooden barricades and armed checkpoints meant to keep out uniformed police officers.

Above the precinct reads: “THIS SPACE IS NOW PROPERTY OF THE SEATTLE PEOPLE.”

A rapper named Raz Simone, appears to have tried to position himself as the leader of the “No cop, Co-op,” where hundreds have been encouraged to remain camped out to occupy area in Seattle’s capitol district.

President Trump tweeted the “warlord” nickname for Simone, commenting on the chaos. Simone refutes the label and accusation.

“The President really put a hit on my head,” Simone tweeted. “I’m not a Terrorist Warlord. Quit spreading that false narrative. The world has NEVER been ready for a strong black man. We have been peaceful and nothing else. If I die don’t let it be in vain.”

Hundreds stormed Seattle’s City Hall Tuesday night to demand Mayor Jenny Durkan defund police or step down.

Simone, a local rapper with an AK-47 slung from his shoulder and a pistol attached to his hip, screamed, “This is war!” into a white-and-red megaphone and instructed armed paramilitaries to guard the barricades in shifts.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee have thrown support behind Black Lives Matter and urged Trump to stop tweeting and “go back to your bunker.”

Seattle Assistant Police Chief Deanna Nollette has said the department is working to identify the leaders in CHAZ to discuss reopening the precinct and noted officers are responding to 911 calls in the area.

“We are dedicated to working with peaceful protesters on a way to move forward,” Nollette said. “There’s a whole citywide effort to try to identify who the leaders are. It’s just a matter of establishing a dialogue so we can take down the plywood and welcome people back into the lobby.”

Meanwhile, “THE DEMANDS OF THE COLLECTIVE BLACK VOICES AT FREE CAPITOL HILL TO THE GOVERNMENT OF SEATTLE, WASHINGTON,”  has been published on Medium.com. The list of 30 demands calls to defund the police department and retry “all People in Color currently serving a prison sentence for violent crime,” among other goals.

DAILY MAIL compiled tons of photos in their coverage.

Some highlights:

HOMELESS STOLE THEIR FOOD

“The homeles [sic] people we invited took away all the food at the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” the person tweeted. “We need more food to keep the area operational. please if possible bring vegan meat substitutes, fruits, oats, soy products, etc. – anything to help us eat.”

SIMONE’S LEADERSHIP QUOTES

• “We are the police of this community now!”
• “We got to the point where addressing the point physically was the best way to get our point across.”
• In response to the subject saying his glasses were broken during the assault, “Yeah, we should have broken your face!”
• Don’t be making no threats n****, I’ll blow your brains out”

UPDATE: VIDEO ADDED BELOW TO VERIFY OUR REPORTING

STOP AND FRISK IS IN AFFECT

Armed protesters have been spotting manning checkpoints where they check identification and frisk people at entrances to the zone.

The President really put a hit on my head. I’m not a Terrorist Warlord. Quit spreading that false narrative. The world has NEVER been ready for a strong black man. We have been peaceful and nothing else. If I die don’t let it be in vain. pic.twitter.com/HSEs5C2QRv

— Raz Simone (@RazSimone) June 11, 2020

DEMAND (Highlights via Medium, no changes made by Dispatch)

1. The Seattle Police Department and attached court system are beyond reform. We do not request reform, we demand abolition. We demand that the Seattle Council and the Mayor defund and abolish the Seattle Police Department and the attached Criminal Justice Apparatus. This means 100% of funding, including existing pensions for Seattle Police. At an equal level of priority we also demand that the city disallow the operations of ICE in the city of Seattle.
2. In the transitionary period between now and the dismantlement of the Seattle Police Department, we demand that the use of armed force be banned entirely. No guns, no batons, no riot shields, no chemical weapons, especially against those exercising their First Amendment right as Americans to protest.
3. We demand an end to the school-to-prison pipeline and the abolition of youth jails. Get kids out of prison, get cops out of schools. We also demand that the new youth prison being built in Seattle currently be repurposed.
4. We demand that not the City government, nor the State government, but that the Federal government launch a full-scale investigation into past and current cases of police brutality in Seattle and Washington, as well as the re-opening of all closed cases reported to the Office of Police Accountability. In particular, we demand that cases particular to Seattle and Washington be reopened where no justice has been served, namely the cases of Iosia Faletogo, Damarius Butts, Isaiah Obet, Tommy Le, Shaun Fuhr, and Charleena Lyles.
5. We demand reparations for victims of police brutality, in a form to be determined.
6. We demand that the City of Seattle make the names of officers involved in police brutality a matter of public record. Anonymity should not even be a privilege in public service.
7. We demand a retrial of all People in Color currently serving a prison sentence for violent crime, by a jury of their peers in their community.
8. We demand decriminalization of the acts of protest, and amnesty for protestors generally, but specifically those involved in what has been termed “The George Floyd Rebellion” against the terrorist cell that previously occupied this area known as the Seattle Police Department. This includes the immediate release of all protestors currently being held in prison after the arrests made at 11th and Pine on Sunday night and early Saturday morning June 7th and 8th, and any other protesters arrested in the past two weeks of the uprising, the name Evan Hreha in particular comes to mind who filmed Seattle police macing a young girl and is now in jail.
9. We demand that the City of Seattle and the State Government release any prisoner currently serving time for a marijuana-related offense and expunge the related conviction.
10. We demand the City of Seattle and State Government release any prisoner currently serving time just for resisting arrest if there are no other related charges, and that those convictions should also be expunged.
11. We demand that prisoners currently serving time be given the full and unrestricted right to vote, and for Washington State to pass legislation specifically breaking from Federal law that prevents felons from being able to vote.
12. We demand an end to prosecutorial immunity for police officers in the time between now and the dissolution of the SPD and extant justice system.
13. We demand the abolition of imprisonment, generally speaking, but especially the abolition of both youth prisons and privately-owned, for-profit prisons.
14. We demand in replacement of the current criminal justice system the creation of restorative/transformative accountability programs as a replacement for imprisonment.
15. We demand autonomy be given to the people to create localized anti-crime systems.
16. We demand that the Seattle Police Department, between now and the time of its abolition in the near future, empty its “lost and found” and return property owned by denizens of the city.
17. We demand justice for those who have been sexually harassed or abused by the Seattle Police Department or prison guards in the state of Washington.
18. We demand that between now and the abolition of the SPD that each and every SPD officer turn on their body cameras, and that the body camera video of all Seattle police should be a matter of easily accessible public record.
19. We demand that the funding previously used for Seattle Police be redirected into: A) Socialized Health and Medicine for the City of Seattle. B) Free public housing, because housing is a right, not a privilege. C) Public education, to decrease the average class size in city schools and increase teacher salary. D) Naturalization services for immigrants to the United States living here undocumented. (We demand they be called “undocumented” because no person is illegal.) E) General community development. Parks, etc.

We also have economic demands that must be addressed.

1. We demand the de-gentrification of Seattle, starting with rent control.
2. We demand the restoration of city funding for arts and culture to re-establish the once-rich local cultural identity of Seattle.
3. We demand free college for the people of the state of Washington, due to the overwhelming effect that education has on economic success, and the correlated overwhelming impact of poverty on people of color, as a form of reparations for the treatment of Black people in this state and country.
4. We demand that between now and the abolition of the SPD that Seattle Police be prohibited from performing “homeless sweeps” that displace and disturb our homeless neighbors, and on equal footing we demand an end to all evictions.
5. We demand a decentralized election process to give the citizens of Seattle a greater ability to select candidates for public office such that we are not forced to choose at the poll between equally undesirable options. There are multiple systems and policies in place which make it impractical at best for working-class people to run for public office, all of which must go, starting with any fees associated with applying to run for public office.

Related to economic demands, we also have demands pertaining to what we would formally call “Health and Human Services.”

1. We demand the hospitals and care facilities of Seattle employ black doctors and nurses specifically to help care for black patients.
2. We demand the people of Seattle seek out and proudly support Black-owned businesses. Your money is our power and sustainability.
3. We demand that the city create an entirely separate system staffed by mental health experts to respond to 911 calls pertaining to mental health crises, and insist that all involved in such a program be put through thorough, rigorous training in conflict de-escalation.

Finally, let us now address our demands regarding the education system in the City of Seattle and State of Washington.

1. We demand that the history of Black and Native Americans be given a significantly greater focus in the Washington State education curriculum.
2. We demand that thorough anti-bias training become a legal requirement for all jobs in the education system, as well as in the medical profession and in mass media.
3. We demand the City of Seattle and State of Washington remove any and all monuments dedicated to historical figures of the Confederacy, whose treasonous attempts to build an America with slavery as a permanent fixture were an affront to the human race.

TIMELINE OF REMARKS:

0:00 Approach
0:35 “We are the police of this community now!”
6:20 “For your own safety, you need to go” seems like a thinly veiled threat
7:10 “You might need a little love tap” as a cutesy way of describing earlier assault
9:10 “We got to the point where addressing the point physically was the best way to get our point across.”
11:00 Video blacked out as conflict heats up.
12:30 Someone starts yelling “WHAT THE FUCK” for reasons unclear. Based on later context, this appears to be when most of the assault occurred, may have involved kicking, definitely broke his glasses.
13:20 “Give me your phone and sit down.” / “You just broke my glasses! I’m blind!” /”If you don’t sit down, I’ll make you sit down!”
13:45 “You just broke my glasses and stole my phone!”
14:45 “You just broke my glasses!” “Yeah, we should have broken your face!”
15:10 “Don’t be making no threats n****, I’ll blow your brains out”
(the “threat” appears to have been “I want to leave here within the next 15 minutes”, I think?)
16:10 “I tried to walk away from you guys, and you guys chased me”
27:37 “When everyone was Looting and putting shit on Fire, what’s what I was about. I loved that (…) that’s what got the biggest results”
“The whole world is looking at Seattle specifically”
28:55 “If you painted that yesterday they would have celebrated it, coz today they want to run and take over the block”
37:43 “I’m not gonna stay here and let you play victim” Conversation heats up
39:35 “I want us to have an open discussion”
41:01 “Why the fuck should I care” “The whole place is burned..” “Yesterday they wouldn’t have given a fuck”
41:28 “We are trying to self-police before they come police us”
43:00 “It’s like the police fucking chasing me”
43:38 “You are not leaving unless someone beats your ass”
46:46 “Sorry bro” Group Hug

Additional source: www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/h077uv/raz_simone_and_crew_assault_man_for_graffiti_june/