Antonio Mays Sr.holds a picture of himself and his son, Antonio Mays Jr., in Superior Court at the King County Courthouse in Seattle on Dec.
10, 2025.Ellen M.
Banner/The Seattle Times hide caption The protesters are panicked.It is shortly before 3 a.m.on June 29, 2020, and racial justice demonstrators at an encampment in Seattle are tracking a stolen white Jeep that's driving erratically.A few dozen tents are spread around Cal Anderson Park, where protesters had set up a zone called the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, or CHOP.
Some people at the camp had been armed and on high alert for weeks, after a car drove into a crowd of protesters and several shootings in the area.As the Jeep slowly loops around a turf playfield, it comes within 10 feet of a tent and sparks a wave of fear that quickly sweeps the camp.CHOP existed for 23 days in 2020, an eight-block collection of tents, graffiti and 24-hour protests that emerged after Seattle police abandoned a precinct in the heart of the city.
Police left after 10 days of mass protests ignited by the murder of George Floyd.Nearly every night of the standoff had ended with police blanketing the neighborhood with tear gas.
After they retreated, it felt like detente.Protesters held movie nights and set up mutual aid stations and stages for speeches and music.But on this night, three weeks after the birth of CHOP, the air is filled not with songs, chants and demands for justice, but with paranoia, menace, gunshots.
In the absence of police, an armed, voluntary security force emerged, set up by protesters themselves."There's shots, shots fired, I think," a livestreamer says, capturing the moment in a dark, shaky video broadcast live to Facebook.Then the sound of gunshots.
"More shots fired, more shots fired.It's that white car that's been circling around."Livestreamer Diaz Love's video was one of the ...