News Nov 15, 2022 at 10:31 am

Following School Shooting, Students Eye $9 Million Cut to Seattle Police Department to Pay for Counselors

Student organizer Chetan Soni led his classmates in chants. Thousands of voices shouted "enough is enough" and "no more silence, end gun violence," including the council members the students called on for action. HK

Comments

3

Ban weed.

While cannabis induced psychosis is rare and most people can use it with no ill effects, the damage that is done by those that do succumb can be devastating to both the users as well as their victims.

Perhaps more benefits can be realized than just treating the symptoms with a large mental health staffs after the harm has been done.

4

@3 Then ban alcohol too! 1000x the negative social impacts. Then divorce as that clearly impacts mental health of children. Then...

Oh wait. You were just being a stupid trolling pile of shit.

7

It's bad enough these kids were subjected to this terrible incident but now they get to be manipulated by adults as yet another cause du jour to advocate for more funding and more anti public safety rhetoric. Listening to these kids repeat the same tired, talking points that we hear time and again from the various activist organizations highlights how we are further failing them. We can debate the merits of mental health counselors in schools but the notion the resource officers make schools more violent or that more anti-racist training would somehow have prevented this is ridiculous on its face. I wish these kids well in the future and I hope as they grow older they can find their own voice rather than regurgitate the propaganda being fed to them by adults who want to use them as political tools.

8

@4: "Oh wait. You were just being a stupid trolling pile of shit."

Sounds like violent hate speech of the kind I was talking about. Have yourself checked.

There are 400 million bongs in this country. About half of the population partake of weed with absolutely no trouble. But the few that have a psychosis, or develop one due to use cause more problems than the general public cares to deal with. Mental health counseling is a good idea, but that's going to run afoul of privacy concerns if we have to go door to door screening people. Counselors in the schools might help the survivors. But it's better if we didn't have to have group hugs after the fact. Let's get to the root cause.

Sorry you don't like it. And yes, let's get rid of booze as well.

9

Seems odd that taxes keep going up year over year, and odd that SPD funding is untouchable, but there's still a funding shortfall that means kids have to be sacrificed to gun owners. What councilmembers are saying is not adding up, sorry.

10

@9: No funding is “untouchable,” but SPD is severely understaffed, and the toxic effects of “defund” rhetoric linger. Voters have completely rejected the notion of defunding the SPD, and so whenever “defund” rhetoric gets used, it prejudices the dialog against redirecting funds from SPD to any other budget.

12

"The students calculated that this investment would be enough to pay a living wage for one counselor for every 200 high schoolers in Seattle, the same ratio the students demanded at the June rally."

Sounds good. But therapy/counseling is a partnership. The counselee is not a passive recipient, but an active participant. Counseling is not like an antibiotic - applied and we sit back and wait for the results to kick in. I say let's fill the schools with these counselors with the caveat that if ten years later school shootings have not stopped, we track down these kids later on (since they will have graduated) and ask, "Now what?"

13

Again with the defund the police pageantry. Followed by the clown show of "camp counselors" for all.... when the real problem lies with the way these little animals were raised.

Let us start right at the beginning with the parents.... just because you can make a child doesn't mean you should....especially if you are going to raise them like wolves. .

Try bringing in the parents and asking how, when and where their little darling children got hold of a gun and what type of parenting would lead their little darlings to bring a gun to school and shoot somebody.

Frankly, I'd level charges against he parents....they can all share a cell together and can take parenting and family skills classes together.

14

on what planet do teen boys trying their best to look "hard" voluntarily go to the counselor to exercise their angries? someone finds out you went to counseling that only exacerbates the bullying. come on, Hannah, you don't seem to be THAT far removed from high school you should know this.

15

If Uvalde TX didn't demonstrate to the world how much good it does to put more and more cops in schools, I don't know what would.

16

There is $170 million for homeless in the budget.... Think of the children!...... won't somebody think of the children! The future of a country lies in its youth... and right now we are in grave danger.

We could have a tsar outreach program with the gang members..... appoint one of them a position as tsar, get them an office...high rise downtown..., say $120,000 salary with benefits... and ask them to be a liaison between students, parents and school officials.... we could model it after the CHOP program, remember Andre Taylor, the pimp they hired to be community outreach liaison .

Very successful...., well then again was it, its more hostile than ever and crime went up on his watch.. But hey ... I willing to give Andrre Taylor another shot...if he is available...


Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.