What? I saw SPD's armored vehicle cruise through the intersection of Broadway and Pike around 9pm on May 1, 2013.

Mayor Murray should say that surplus military weapons, vehicles, and surveillance gear have no place in a civilian police force, and any equipment SPD have received under the Pentagon's 1033 program or others like it is headed for the scrap yard.

And that same bill that requires council approval prior to acquisition of surveillance equipment required agencies that already have it to provide their protocols for use within 30 days of passage. After months of searching for any record of such, City Council's legal department informed me that they had nothing but a few drafts from SPD for potential use of their wireless mesh surveillance network.

Memewatch: "police service" and/or "police agency" soon to replace "police department" nationwide? Substance over style, please.

@3, good example of why VL's suggestion earlier today doesn't usually work in practice:

I'm fine with the military giving surplus gear to police departments, but those donations need to come with a requirement that the beneficiary police department draw up a set of rules outlining when it is appropriate and permissible to use heavy-duty equipment…

Whitcomb is a liar. See WTO '99, the subsequent anniversary demos in '00 and 01, LEIU in '03, and the recent Occupy stuff. Liar.

Maybe this is a good time to ask just what kind of warrantless surveillance by police unfit for public discussion and unqualified for private discussion City Council stumbled onto last year.

@7: Cite your sources, please.

The surveillance ordinance needs fixing.

How about:

1. The number of Mobile Forensic Data Extraction devices, GPS tracking devices, biometric technology, cell phone sniffers, deep packet sniffers, unmanned aerial vehicles (sometimes called “drones”), apparatuses and systems for augmented detainee restraint (also known as shock-cuffs), Cellebrite or other mobile forensics units, and devices capable of facial or behavioral recognition currently owned, leased, or borrowed or proposed for purchase or acquisition by DEPARTMENT and the unit or division of each agency given primary use of each device.

2. All practices, procedures, and trainings governing use of all such devices.

3. All policies relating to the maintenance and retention of information obtained through such devices, including but not limited to, policies detailing how records of such information are kept, databases in which they are placed, limitations on who may access the records and for what purposes, circumstances under which they are deleted, and circumstances under which they may be shared with other government agencies or nongovernmental entities.

4. The legal standard or level of suspicion (e.g. probable cause, reasonable suspicion, relevance) the agency requires or proffers prior to using such devices.

5. All applications submitted by DEPARTMENT for equipment through the Department of Defense’s “1033” program (either directly to the Department of Defense or to your state’s administering agency), including whether the application was granted, denied, or granted in part (and if so, how).

6. All “1033” program inventories created and maintained pursuant to the May 22, 2012, moratorium (see https://www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/…).

7. All applications submitted by the DEPARTMENT for equipment through the Department of Defense’s “1122” program (either directly to the Department of Defense or to your state’s administering agency), including whether the application was granted, denied, or granted in part (and if so, how).

Looks like Sean Whitcomb has clarified his "We don't" to "We do". The SPD's blog just listed a bunch of items provided through the 1033 program, including ballistic plates and rifle sights. List including spreadsheet: http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2014/08/14…

Also, the SPD gave a Dodge Peacekeeper to the Ellensburg Police Department just a couple years ago. It's still technically owned by the DOD.

right; like 20 yrs from now we'll all look back at how we almost slipped into a dystopian fascist police state but heroically came to our senses in 2014. Its globalism and technology dumbfucks. Decentralize and become hippie farmers or die.

Puck figs.

Personally, I'd like to see all Seattle-area cops go back to blue uniforms--exclusively, if possible. And I'd like all transit police to look more like professional public servants than cops in riot gear. That is all for now.

@19: Yes, yes! And no SUVs or muscle cars. Park in parking spaces, not on the sidewalk or a street-side no-parking zone. Keep under the speed limit unless it's an emergency and lights are flashing, in the right lane unless passing. Basically, if it says, "bow to me, plebe," it should not be part of the police image.

The SPD has used their armored cars for all sorts of things for at least the last 15 years. If he says they aren't going to do that now, then The Stranger has a journalistic OBLIGATION to follow up on that. The two armored cars the SPD used to "control" peaceful excercises of citizens rights to assemble and air their grievances from 1999 forward, were vehicles designed and refined in South Africa for apartheid.

I'd be shocked if either the mayor or the new police chief actually excercised control over our police department to a degree to actually keep that corrupt group of thugs from deploying whatever armored cars they have this year against the next batch of sign wavers that "occupy" Westlake park for an evening.

@21: Yes, that which Lindsay Cohen photographed at Pine and Boylston is what I saw minutes later at Pine (I mistakenly wrote Pike above @1) and Broadway, following demonstrators around. This was not long after SPD staff were lobbing explosives into crowds down around 7th and Virginia.

I saw a vehicle like it at a West Precinct picnic in Occidental Park 10 days ago. I asked the cop nearby, "Why is that here? Are you expecting a war?" He replied, "No, but I've been to war. That keeps us safe." He had a real, "come and get me, bro," attitude. He wasn't as cocky as members of the so-called Anti-Crime Team I met at Westlake Park in 2011 (those guys came on the scene and tried to pick fights with anyone who addressed them), but he did seem like the type who'd be right at home at doing door-to-door searches in Fallujah. Or Seattle.

See also: "Police: Man draws SWAT response after hitting sister with boat paddle in Beacon Hill," by Lynsi Burton, August 14, 2014, http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/201…

@3 @7 @8 are all right. Welcome to East Germany, aka Seattle.