Here's hoping it sustains itself for a while.
I'm not passing judgment yet since the days are young and the political bias on the ground is thick in both directions. But it is definitely not "by all accounts".
But my personal bias on the table is that yeah, trading police that were imperfectly constrained by the system for new police utterly and entirely unconstrained by the system is probably not going to go well. The real "fun" will start when Raz's faction pisses off enough people to form a violent counterfaction and you get a gang war, so give it a bit. It takes time for these things to develop. Let the honeymoon wear off and have this place showing a functioning system for, oh, say, at least a month before declaring victory. Not that you declared victory, I'm just saying, I recommend against getting too invested in this.
It's not as if "a place that has no police" is some shocking new experiment that has never been run before; you've got plenty of places you can look out in the world to see what happens next. It's not a difficult-to-predict progression.
It would be nice if it could sustain itself, but it will likely creak under its own weight in a month or so.
Aside, intentionally or unintentionally, calling a group of predominantly black people "thugs" is a common dog whistle.
That was just the beginning of the confrontation. If you watch the full video the group then followed and hassled the tagger for several minutes before the tagger was hit in the face and had their glasses broken (and their smartphone was stolen from them). Someone also threatened to blow the taggers brains out.
I'd like to think, regardless of anyone's politics, we could all agree that the elected government should have authority over the police.
Whether that's going to be a positive or a negative remains to be seen, but that's one of the key notions in these protests.
By all honest, first person accounts then?
Two stories down in the link you sent, theres a picture of a bunch of people calmly watching a movie in a makeshift outdoor theater.
It sure doesn’t look like the tear-gassed, rubber bullet fests we’ve been seeing around the rest of the country.
For more info: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-54-local-crime-re...
The media treats cops according to what's best for the story. Lately, that involves being extremely critical of them. In other times when we aren't in the midst of a pandemic, mass unemployment and then nationwide protests, and the story is that the cops shot a criminal suspect, they use euphemisms like "officer-involved shooting." The media narrative today is extremely hostile to police.
So when I see "only a handful of incidents," I feel there might be a bit of an agenda behind that. Knocking down the World Trade Center twin towers and a side of the Pentagon were only a "handful of incidents," too. Not to mention the number of unarmed black people shot by police last year (nine total). All of those are a disgrace, but the sheer number of atrocities that happen are irrelevant to how unjust or outrageous the atrocities might be.
My friends that have walked through the area can confirm.
Why predict defeat?
Why not appreciate the experiment as an alternative to our broken system?
Yeah, it'll eventually go away.
But maybe change will be secured, and there are some ideas that do make sense and will spread or stick around.
Is the worst that could happen worse than the status quo?
You sound like one of the commenters on Drew Houston's Ask HN telling him no-one will pay for rsync.
However, by Sunday (or maybe early, early Monday morning), the police were using CS gas again at the order of the police chief, Carmen Best.
I did not know that. Do you have a reference to back this up?
18:22: Reporter: "So, Chief Best, you stood here on Friday and you said it was going to be your decision and your decision alone to use tear gas. Tear gas was deployed on Sunday. You released a video today to say that it was not your decision to close the East Precinct. So who is making tactical decisions right now, for the Seattle Police Department?"
18:51: Best: "So for the tear gas, it was my decision. ... We suspended the use for 30 days unless it was a 'life safety situation.' And that was the exemption. ... The officers felt like it was a 'life safety situation' ... and I concurred."
19:27: Best: "I own that decision. I made that decision."
Here's a press conference transcript from June 7 where they claimed they would stop using CS gas[2].
Here's a secondary source reporting on the June 11 press conference[3].
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rE4VMjClqI
[2]: https://durkan.seattle.gov/2020/06/transcript-mayor-durkans-...
[3]: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/06/11/43893335/durkan-...
I would have believed it plausible had they gone outside the city to some secluded area to create their utopia, but it's being done on existing buildings they did not build, and property that is not theirs but I guess their "revolution" is to not give two shits about anything.
I give them at most one more week.