fire the bums! Thank you for reporting on this outrageous misconduct.

They don't want to be in Seattle and we don't want them in Seattle. Let them go their own way. Can't we do that? Like the Sonics? Let them go be Oklahoma City's police. With them out of the way we can create a new public safety department that believes in us.

Funny how all the people with the guns and power are "under attack". Cops, Christians, White Men, RKBA Activists, Republicans, the NRA...

To the Privileged, Equality feels like Discrimination.

SPOG that's too close to spooge

Is there a conservative who's willing to explain why you've got such a hard-on for destroying teachers unions, and all other public employee unions, but you never have a bad word to say about the blatantly corrupt police unions?

@3 Summed up my thoughts perfectly. Somehow the "victims" have so much power.

@4 - I think you mean "not close enough"

On the secrecy: This is a good thing, because we don't want to set a precedent whereby negotiations for certain jobs are forced to be public. I say this as someone who has gone through union contract negotiations.
On the rest of it: obviously the police are "under attack" in an editorializing sort of way. We are attacking their way of life, which is excessive use of force, and lack of accountability. That doesn't mean that the attacks are invalid.
It's certainly true that we need huge changes, and the police need to be held accountable, but this specific complaint/post is nothing. All it shows is how sensitive they are, but it's not really a big deal.
Calling it a "war" on police is different, but I don't see much here, other than continued opposition to common sense reforms.

To put it in showbiz terms, SPOG is the agent for the cops. Like every good agent, they are going to play hardcore, and play the victim when necessary - and if that means throwing their sibling unions under the bus, so be it.

I'm not saying that is good. I'm saying that it is up to the city's Labor Relations Department - which is as political as the day is long, and is seemingly stuck in some 1940's Frank Capra mindset where we all just go along because we all are liberals - to be as hardcore and showbizzy in return.

Any bets as to how this will turn out?

It's precisely this mind-set on the part of SPOG that is fomenting so much mistrust among citizens. So long as they continue to view the very people they have purportedly sworn to "protect and serve" as the enemy, so long as they perceive any form of legitimate criticism directed at them as being "under attack", no amount of court or Justice Department-imposed "reform" will have any effect.

Confidentiality in the midst of contract negotiations is understandable and necessary; denigrating citizens for demanding accountability that the Department has time and again demonstrated it is patently unable and unwilling to implement on its own accord, is incomprehensible.

Whats going on with the comments? A bunch of articles where posted with no way to comment. Is it due to how bad the trolls are getting? Can we not just ban the racist assholes that seem to be showing up?

This is why elections matter. I voted McGinn. The unions only have as much power as elected officials give them. I support collective bargaining but the key word is bargain. As in negotiate. Not dictate. As in the unions don't get everything they want. SPOG gives other public unions a bad name. I hope when and if they negotiate a new contract that shields SPD from accountability, voters remember that at the next mayoral election.

Maybe the police wouldn't be under attack if their members didn't "beat the Mexican piss" out of minorities, shoot people armed with a carving knife, etc, etc, etc...

They have only themselves to blame if they have lost the support of the public they are supposed to serve.

@15 - The trouble is, they don't make arguments. They toss a little snark around, make assertions that have to recourse to data for or against, and beat their chests and tout their superiority. See @13, from the artist-most-likely-formerly-known-as-Teckel. What is there to argue? He's just being a dick for the sake of it.

You know how to spot a true SLOG coward? His activity is hidden. Probably because he knows, deep down, that his reasoning (when applicable) is so shoddy, and his rhetoric so unsavory, that hisown words could easily be used against him.

The main trouble with the police in this city is the law that said they can't be prosecuted successfully unless they can be proven to have acted out of "malice." That may be a state law; can't remember.

@20

The public that the police serve is all of the public, you racist drop of snot.

Police departments, all around not just Seattle, and authority in general have totally rework themselves and take a whole new approach to dealing with the public at large. It seems that there is a hostile, them versus us, attitude on their part and this must change.

@12: The trouble is, racist assholes call other racist assholes racist assholes. So it would be difficult for any moderator to determine who is the racist asshole, if the alleged racist asshole is indeed a racist asshole, if the accuser is not a racist asshole trying to deflect his guilt, or vice-versa. In addition, you would have to determine if the racist asshole is not a racist asshole but writing in a satirical way portraying himself or herself as a racist asshole; in which case you would need a third party whom all agree is not a racist asshole to arbitrate the matter. It really is an exhaustive process, as all permutations must be evaluated to be equitable to those who are indeed not racist assholes.

@20

Sawant did win her first city council election, which was city-wide for the seat she stood for.

Anyone can grunt and harrumph and lay claim to the imagined support of the disaffected, non-voting demographic, without any risk of being inconvenienced by hard evidence. But if we instead rely only on whatever statistics do actually exist, it looks like Sawant really does have the support of a (slight) majority of the city's population.

When the empowered and privileged cry victim, it's just so fucking pansy-ass.

Two things almost always work in today's political climate: terrorism/threats of violence, and claiming to be a victim under attack.

No one should be surprised any more when a group uses either of these tactics, regardless of how brazen or bizarre.

The SPOG Facebook feed is a never-ending gift for sociologists and social psychologists focused on the culture of policing in America. Follow that mofo (alcohol helps),

start by banning troll @23, go from there.

@25

Since Burgess didn't run against Sawant, his victory tells us nothing about citywide levels of support for her.

Other socialist candidates, of course, have been crushed since Sawant was elected. So it's not her political party the people of Seattle support; grabbing the $15/hr flag and elbowing to the front of the parade probably has a lot more to do with it.

But she's at least slightly popular, whatever the reason, and grousing about it isn't going to change anything.

Lets just disolve SPD and contract with KCSO for policing. No SPD, no SPOG.

I'm so darn tired of "blueLivesMatter".
Cops always act like ONLY blue lives matter. And everybody else can go take a flying you-know-what.

I suppose that SPOG considers @Ansel's reporting to be a vicious attack on SPD and SPOG. Telling the truth about what is in the contract is not an attack. Demanding accountability is not an attack.

SPOG and SPD want to be above the law. Sounds like were back to the days of Tricky Dick Nixon. SPOG and SPD would really love China and Russia. Then they could jail/kill all of us who want accountability with impunity. We would be considered enemies of the state, the police state.

i knoe we have some truly bad cops and they must be hanged. But if there's nobody ever compliments the fine officers who protect us,
only insults and accusations, and the street urchins stop respecting the police, we will soon be living in a "the Purge" (starring the hot Ethan Hawke) -like world. Bless of kind officers of the law. I'm offering $12.5 mil for info leading to the arrest, trial and hanging of ANY racist, stupid, evil maniac cop.

@18 - Non-registration strikes me as more passive than a registered user actively opting out of having a readable history. That said, if you want your thoughts - or whatever skidmarks of one's thoughts one can actually give voice in an internet comments section - to hold any relevance or legitimacy, you need to offer some connection to your other thoughts. Contradicting yourself or occasionally losing composure doesn't invalidate any points, but the ways in which and reasons for which you do these things reveal a lot about how you think, how you arrive at thoughts ... or at least about how the persona you've constructed for the medium does so.

What I give no weight whatsoever is anyone's assessment as to whether another poster is collegiate, non-collegiate, excessively collegiate, or inadequately collegiate. That you give weight to whether or not someone successfully played ball with the academic construct, but not to whether they skulk around, hiding the totality of their thoughts from others as if ashamed of their own contradictions, suggests to me that you're not quite the truth-to-power jester/gadfly you seem to think you are.