Neighbors defend Police Chief Best’s home, claim crowd terrorized area

This past weekend a crowd made their way to the home of Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best in Snohomish County. According to a statement from Snohomish County Sheriff Adam Fortney, Chief Best was not at the residence at the time of the protest, and described the visit as large, aggressive, and concerning to neighbors.

Two of those neighbors, Whit and Jamie Roulstone, helped defend the area, and joined the Dori Monson Show on KIRO Radio to discuss what happened.

“I came back home from running an errand at about 6:50 in the evening, and there started to be a line up of cars on the road out in front of the house. And then about 20 minutes later, there are more and more cars out there. We went out to ask what was going on. … People start getting out of their car wearing BLM shirts, and we kind of at that point realized we know who lives in the community with us and that we need to come together to make sure nothing happened,” Whit said.

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“I was scared,” Jamie added. “When I started seeing the people get out of the cars, many of them were dressed in black, had hoods on, had masks over their face — not pandemic masks — but legitimate masks covering most of their face except for their eyes. They had bags with them loaded with Lord knows what. It was very, very scary.”

They sent an alert around on the neighborhood Facebook page and one of the neighbors blocked part of the street with their car. What were they and their neighbors prepared to do to defend the neighborhood against this crowd?

“We pushed them back in the sense of asking them a lot of questions. They got uncomfortable, they moved back. We then moved barriers in the sense of cars in order to continue to push back,” Whit said.

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“These guys have the opportunity to do one thing — light a fire, a firework, a Molotov cocktail, whatever it may be — the spark goes out and then now we have a neighborhood in crisis, and that’s just what we couldn’t have. And as a neighborhood we all banded together knowing that, and we were willing to push back as hard as we could with as peaceful means as possible and wait for police.”

Were any of the neighbors armed?

“There was, that I know of, only one visible firearm.”

Whit says tactics like these are wrong and not the proper venue through which to truly affect change.

“We united as a community and came together to defend ourselves against illegitimate claims in a mob, … it’s not right that this is the venue they’re taking it to. There’s city hall, there’s One Police Plaza: That’s where you protest, that’s where you demonstrate, that’s where you actively, peacefully get your voice heard.”

“You don’t terrorize a neighborhood in order to attempt to get your voice out there.”

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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