Patrol vehicle set on fire while the police was inside
October 16, 2020: CREDIT Law Enforcement Today
SEATTLE, WA — A suspect has been arrested for setting a police patrol vehicle set on fire while a Seattle Police Department officer was inside the vehicle.
The incident happened Thursday afternoon in the South Lake Union neighborhood near Dexter Avenue and John Street, according to a Seattle Police Department.
An officer was in a patrol car in an alley around 1:30 p.m. looking for a man reportedly brandishing a piece of 2 x 2 lumber to the patrol vehicle set on fire.
The man was located, but threw the flaming lumber inside the vehicle while the officer was in it.
More officers responded and chased the man into a parking garage where he was taken into custody after deploying a taser.
The post also said that one officer is believed to have discharged a firearm during the incident, but no one was hit.
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As the suspect was being arrested, the police patrol vehicle set on fire from the piece of wood.
One officer was taken to Harborview Medical Center with non-life-threatening burns.
Police are continuing to investigate, and details about the suspect are not available at this time.
KIRO 7 had Chopper 7 footage of the damaged police vehicle.
Last month we reported on a woman in Seattle who mistook an apartment security guard for a police officer and attacked him with a machete.
On Sept. 9, a security guard in Seattle was attacked with a machete when he was mistaken for a police officer in the Capitol Hill area in Seattle, Washington area.
The incident occurred on September 8th near where violent protests have occurred since the death of George Floyd while in police custody.
The security guard, a 50-year-old man, worked for an apartment complex in the area of the 1600 block of 12th Avenue before 11:30PM. A woman who saw the guard began yelling insults at him while she was in her vehicle.
A witness in the area told Seattle Police Department that the woman who was slinging insults at the guard exited her car and was carrying a Nerf gun. The woman then asked the guard if he was a cop.
Instead of engaging with the woman, the guard, who was wearing a vest that said “officer” on it walked away. The woman continued yelling and screaming insults at him as he was being the bigger person while walking away from the conflict.
Allegedly, the woman then went back to her car and took out what was described as a foot-long machete and approached the guard. The guard, seeing what was occurring, tried to quickly enter into the lobby of the apartment complex with a bystander to escape the attack.
The guard attempted to close the door of the lobby shut in order to prevent being attacked by the woman to no avail. The woman was able to pull it open and attack the guard, who received at least two five-inch cuts to his forearm. After the incident, the woman retreated to her vehicle and fled the scene.
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The Seattle Police Department advised that when the security guard was being attacked, protest members had been dumping garbage in the area and setting a flag on fire near the East Precinct fence line. Seattle Police said:
“Members of the protest group initially tended to the guard’s wounds before police took over, placed a tourniquet on the man and called for Seattle Fire medics.”
The unnamed security guard was then transported to the Harborview Medical Center with what was described as non-life-threatening injuries.
Seattle Police officers were able to locate the suspect who was at a gas station on Broadway shortly after the attack. Although they did not identify the woman, or advise how they knew she was the assailant, they did state that she had changed her clothing after the vicious attack.
Protests and riots have occurred in the Seattle area since the death of George Floyd while in police custody. Many of the protestors claim that they are fighting for social justice after that death and wish for the agency, and other police departments to be defunded.
Capitol Hill, which was near where the guard was attacked, become well known as an area which was overrun by protesters and dubbed the CHOP, or the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest. This area was overrun by members of Black Lives Matter and Antifa and deemed a police free zone.
This security guard had nothing to do with the protests and was only working to ensure that the apartment complex was safe from people like the woman who attacked him. This security guard received injuries only because this woman, seemingly, believed he might be a police officer because of the inscription on his vest.
This goes to show that no one, if they are a police officer or identified as one, is safe in the city of Seattle. Perhaps it is time for the federal law enforcement agents to step in and make these streets safe again as they have in Chicago.