1 dead, 2 injured in Seattle CHOP area shootings
Seattle Police Officers Guild president Michael Solan weighs in on crime within the city's cop-free zone.
Ben Shapiro said Monday that protesters who are calling to defund police departments across the country were forced to confront the consequences of their movement over the weekend when a pair of shootings in Seattle's Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone (CHOP) left one dead and two others wounded.
"The autonomous zones established in defiance of the 'evil' police calls the cops as soon as there's a problem," the host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" remarked, "and then bars the cops from actually entering -- and it's the fault of the cops."
SEATTLE CUTS DEAL WITH CHOP PROTESTERS TO OPEN SOME STREETS, MAKE BUSINESS DELIVERIES EASIER
The first shooting early Saturday killed a 19-year-old man and left a second man critically injured. Late Sunday, another shooting wounded a 17-year-old man.
The Seattle Police department released body camera footage showing officers responding to the early Saturday shooting and marching through the zone with guns drawn as a group of angry protesters yell profanities and approach the officers.
Shapiro said the violence proves that restraining police "actually has some consequences."
"Do you feel like a lot of these protests have nothing to do with actually achieving good things on behalf of black people and have everything to do with castigating the system?" he asked.
"In the beautiful, newfound pacifistic haven of CHAZ/CHOP over in Seattle, they banned the cops ... two people were shot ... but the chief threat to black people are the cops who are coming in to deal with this problem?" Shapiro went on.
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The host acknowledged that while there are systematic improvements that can be made to law enforcement, "the outsized insanity that leads to people cheering on CHAZ ... is not going to improve the lives of black Americans."
Fox News' Edmund DeMarche contributed to this report.
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