Now, just for a little perspective, let's compare this figure to the cumulative SPD OT pay-out for sportsball games, parades & street fairs.

Because, you know, priorities and all...

another way to distract from police violence. make it a tax payer problem. lovely.

And this left vulnerable neighborhoods unprotected and made it necessary for Seattleblues to purchase guns to protect his home from marauding homosexuals and their horse wives.

But just think of everything those protests accomplished!

Just imagine how many commuters were inconvenienced and suddenly stopped being racist cops.

Worth it!

What's the biggest ticket item on the city budget (by a significant margin)? yep... policing.

What do city council members hear more often than any other demand? (aside from Alex Zimmerman's obscenities)? yep... more policing.

@1: 4/10. I've come to expect better from you.

From a left wing POV look at what you guys could've had for that money? Smartphones for bums? Maybe even fresh, clean, free heroin for local junkies. You did accomplish something this time though as violence against cops is on the increase. Take a bow.

Clearly cops are over paid union thugs.

Well now you can't say they aren't spending enough money supporting this demographic.

Maybe police should be exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act same as farm workers, truckers, railroad workers, airline employees, taxi drivers, fisherman, lumberjacks, firefighters, IT workers, delivery drivers, domestic workers, etc. http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/screen…

@10: Be sure and tell the dispatcher that the next time you need to call 911.

This arrangement of police we use applies the police to the worst possible locations at the worst possible times. You need police where there isn't when there isn't any there, and you need less police than you think you do at places where you already have a ton of resources.

It's so fucking adorable when the comments here blame the protestors. Excuse the fuck out of me, when did the protestors need a 1:1 ratio of cops to protestors? Further, because this actually fucking happened, why the fuck do we need more cops than protestors to watch a dozen fucking people with a sign that says "we probably shouldn't needlessly kill people" walk down the fucking road?

The SPD is king of waste, they're ineffective when we need them, they kill deaf wood carvers for not hearing a quiet shout over traffic noise and ignore most property crime. Remember that time they unloaded an entire can of mace at a grandma? These officers have exactly no sense of reality, they're unaccountable and giving themselves lavish overtime on the idea that they honestly believe there's some kind of citizen war against each and every single one of them such that any protests "against" them is seen as public enemy number one. Let's not even get started about all the undercovers they plant that cause property damage. Where's that expense report?

Lol. It's gonna be millions more. Come on out Saturday

https://www.facebook.com/events/15552112…

They didn't spend enough. When the police don't arrest people for doing a die-in in the street, they are allowing one group to deny another group of their 1st Amendment rights to assemble (for the New Year's celebration) and to speak with those they gather with. The government has an obligation to defend the 1st Amendment for everyone, not just protesters. Same thing when they let 700 people run amok at Westlake and Pacific place. Those assembling (1st Amedment) to sing (speech) were deprived of their rights by a mob.

The difference between a mob robbing someone of their civil rights and the government doing it? The mob going to the polls to elect the government.

@16 can't tell if trolling or serious, but thanks for the laugh

@14, How does a cop know the wood carver is deaf? The non-dropping of the knife because the guy is deaf looks the same as pre-escalation behavior proceeding an attack.

The criteria for a cop or civilian to lawfully use deadly force is "apprehending a design" on the part of another to cause "serious injury or death", "a felony against their person", or "being unlawfully in their abode". RCW 9A.16.050. In the first two instances, they also need to have the means to accomplish that "design" or "felony" (common law rulings over hundreds of years). In the latter instance the fact that they have already unlawfully forced their way into your abode when you are present has been declared by the Legislature to satisfy the idea of "a design" and the risk of it being carried out.

Is the guy giving the appearance of the intent to kill you and the means to carry it out from malicious intent, or because he is mentally ill or has Alzheimer's (which is beyond the potential attackers control) and he really believes you're a zombie? The law doesn't care. Threat and the means to carry out is all that matters. A knife is a deadly weapon per RCW 9A.16.010. It is "objectively reasonable" (SCOTUS: Graham v. Connor) for an officer or citizen to reasonably infer "a design" and "means" to kill or hurt you in the circumstances described by the only witness (the only facts we have). Both the felony prosecutor (Satterberg) and the misdemeanor prosecutor (Holmes) correctly concluded that they could not overcome "reasonable doubt" to convict Officer Birk of a crime.

Birk showing very poor professional judgment in placing himself so close to the deaf woodcarver, when no civilians were at risk from Williams, that Birk had neither the time nor the space to risk that Williams was not going to attack, cost him his job, and it cost Williams his life. That is poor police work and is not criminally culpable. Poor job performance costs one their job, not their liberty. The correct outcome. The lawsuit by the family against Birk and the City, which relies on a different legal standard in assessing Birk's conduct (and the City in training and supervising him), and also relies on a lesser standard of proof, was also successful. Also the correct outcome. That doesn't bring William's back. Nothing can. But it is the best we can do.

We can't prevent all wrongs and all tragedies. All crimes are tragedies, but not all tragedies are crimes. All injustices are tragedies, but not all tragedies are crimes. All murders perpetrated by one against another, but not all deaths perpetrated by one against another are murders (or manslaughter). Those are the rules we have decided to live by and had our elected representatives put into law. If we don't like that the remedy is elect different representatives, not run over the law to incarcerate Ian Burk or those acting the same way, in similar circumstances in the future, while the same laws and common law precedents are still in effect.

George im not gonna read that wall of letters. You do know that SPD itself labeled to the shooting of John T Williams "egregious" and "unjustified" right? That Birk spent not 1 day in jail? That the city paid 1.5 million for that shooting?
The lawless pigs in Amerika are to blame.

@18: lengthy, detailed, accurate explanation of how sometimes a shooting by law enforcement can be unjustified, wrong, civilly liable, appropriately career ending, but not criminal.

@19: I ain't readin no fancy words @18!

If that's not peak Slog, I don't know what is.

@17

He's both.

Do any of these idiot protesters know how many blacks were killed by officers in 2013? 123. 300-something whites were killed by police in 2013. A little less than 1/2 of all the 14,000-something murders in 2013 in the USA victims were black. What percentage of those murders were done by other blacks? 93%. How about people address THAT problem, which is an actual problem, instead on focus on the police-killing-blacks "problem?" Nope, these people refuse to look at facts and reason. They are still chanting "hands up don't shoot" which actually never even happened. Idiots.

PS: I love all the f words being thrown around. Maybe get a bit more creative with your vocabulary? That's mostly @14

PPS: Yes @10!! Well said

The very existence of a police defartment is a type of never-ending protest ( against universal recognition of humanness by some fools). -- http://www.copwatch.com

@23 - [citation needed]