UPDATE: Here are details from the police report. One of the men staying at the camp called police complaining he had been removed for drinking beer. The man told officers that the homeless camp’s “security team” hogtied him – a claim rebuted by the four other men involved.
The incident started Friday when Nickelsville members voted to ban all drugs and alcohol, according to the police report. The four members of the security team told police the man who complained of being hogtied was one of five people known to have alcohol. When they called him out, the man said he had a handgun and would kill whoever came into his tent. The four men went after him. The guy started swinging a hammer. The group told police they planned to tie his hands behind the man’s back, but escorted him out instead after wrestling him to the ground and disarming him.
That man, who called police, told the responding officer he had been one of the coordinators of Nickelsville, but quit his position on Friday because “residents are smoking crack cocaine and marijuana,” according to the report.
“I’ve heard about the dealing that’s going on,” he told the officer. “I’m on Nickels’ side now; I know what he’s up against.”
When the officer arrived at Nickelsville, where he interviewed members of the security team, he could “smell the odor of marijuana in the air,” he wrote in his report. No arrests were made, and the man who had been escorted out of Nickelsville was taken to a homeless shelter.
UPDATE: Seattle Police spokesperson confirms that they responded to a call from the tent city on Friday night. She said police got a call from someone at the camp reporting a disturbance but there were no arrests made.
Organizers at Nickelsville tell Magnolia Voice that they had to call police to the encampment in Discovery Park overnight when people who were asked to leave the area became disruptive. The homeless group has been camping out behind the Daybreak Star Cultural Center since Wednesday night.
The group says they asked eight people to leave because they violated the ban on alcohol use. They were escorted off the site to the closest bus stop and told not to return. Police were called when two or three of those asked to leave became threatening. We have calls in to the police to confirm but we are told that no arrests were made.
Meanwhile, the campers are now spreading out their pink tents and tarps and making what organizers call small neighborhoods. They are using more of the land behind the Cultural Center. They say that giving people more space helps to limit problems.
The city has told the group they must vacate the land by 12pm on Monday. However, the group claims that the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation has now given them what they call sanctuary on the land. The tribes lease the land from the city.
The Northwest Justice Project is now representing Nickelsville in King Co. Superior Court and they plan to ask a judge to stop the city from sweeping the tent area on Monday. The Northwest Justice Projectis a not-for-profit statewide organization that provides free civil legal services to low-income people. They obtained a restraining order in court on Friday that changed the move out deadline to Monday.
The group has a kitchen area set up and received a donation of apples today.
