On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “The Story,” Rep. Denny Heck (D-WA) stated that the “overwhelming number of people involved” in Seattle’s autonomous zone are “peacefully protesting” and stated that there isn’t any doubt that police response time “has been protracted” due to the zone.
Heck said his goddaughter lives in the neighborhood, and told him earlier in the day that “it’s amazingly peaceful.”
He added that Seattle has had rioting, like the WTO riots in 1999, “and this is nothing like that whatsoever.” And “The truth of the matter is that the overwhelming number of people involved in this are peacefully protesting something that is long overdue to be protested.”
Heck further stated that the police response time “has been protracted. There’s no question about that.” And that the increased response times and closing of some businesses “is not desirable, is not something we would want. But Martha, here’s what else we do not want. We do not want a nation in which the culture of police enforcement is that you can lay a black man on the pavement, face down, handcuff him, put your knee in the back of his neck, and squeeze the life out of him, while he is crying for his momma and pleading, ‘I can’t breathe.’ And that was just one example, George Floyd, that is emblematic of far too much institutional racism in this country. That’s the statement that’s being made here.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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