“People who called for defunding SPD wanted…”

People who called for defunding SPD also wanted Nikkita Oliver and NTK elected to citywide offices. How’d that work out?

The "oh I was scared of the angry black man" shooting will continue until the Mayor gets some cojones.

"If SPD determines the call only requires a mental health professional, then cops can leave." - why is this decision being made by the police? SPD isn't exactly well know for their good decision making skills, why not leave the assessment to the trained mental health professional?

As the murder of Eina Kwon shows, a mental-health crisis can rapidly escalate into violence. Therefore, the pilot program will employ proper caution, pairing police with mental-health professionals. Once the program obtains more experience in these calls, the police presence may be reduced.

As the story notes, the only persons who have a real problem with this are the ones who wanted the SPD defunded, and they lost the November 2021 elections by massive citywide landslides, so who cares?

It's no panacea, but it doesn't sound entirely terrible. Ideally, the non-police should have "point" on the situation, even direction, over the role of the officer. Let the SW be the authorizer on the officer's use of force.

The next question of course will be how the SWs are trained, so that they're not being populated with folks who are like "he kicked me, shoot him"

It makes sense that you would want a transition period between the cops and the social workers. You can't just throw them at 911 situations.

The defunders' plan is to send mental health workers out on calls without police until one of those mental health workers gets stabbed or shot. They are not admitting, even to themselves, that this is the plan, but since that is the highly likely and extremely foreseeable outcome of their preferred course of action, that is in fact the plan.

Of the many points on which the Defund crowd has failed to grasp reality, the one most relevant here says we’ll need MORE police training and police presence as we start these police alternative programs. The idea we would instantly save money, or fund these programs purely from cutting police budgets, is a fantasy — and not a harmless one.

It’s also worth noting the police presence is not there just to protect the other responders, or the person in crisis, but everyone around the scene, as well. Again, the murder of Eina Kwon shows how easily one of these situations can escalate to hurt other persons.

@4: "why is this decision being made by the police?"

Exactly. Why aren't the mental health workers able to make a judgement and then tell police whether they are needed or not?

@5: "As the murder of Eina Kwon shows, a mental-health crisis can rapidly escalate into violence."

Escalate is an odd word here. If there was any escalation, it occurred in Goosby's mind prior to Kwon's arrival at the intersection. There was no interaction between the two prior to the shooting. And this could be a problem that alternative first responders will face. That gun, knife or piece of pipe can come out pretty quickly. And like it or not, this is what the police train to handle (not always very well). Even of the mental health workers take the lead in the first contact, having someone on scene who knows how to handle unprovoked violence can be handly.

The SLOG trolls assert sometimes that 2021 election results were about homeless people not being coerced enough and other times assert that 2021 results were about opposition to the defunding, I mean to councilmembers who had claimed in vague statements to support defunding eventually then immediately broken those promises and then walked them back. Which is it? Mosqueda won by a bigger landslide than Harrell, NTK almost won (it took a ton of negative ads to elect Davison even barely), and Nikkita got a lot more votes than Gonzalez did even though Nikkita's abolitionist and Gonzalez isn't

"As the story notes, the only persons who have a real problem with this are the ones who wanted the SPD defunded, and they lost the November 2021 elections by massive citywide landslides, so who cares?"

@5 anyone concerned about or affected by crime ought to be outraged, never mind concerned about failure to move aggressively on alternate response because every minute police spend on "not crime" is a minute they spend not preventing or solving crime.

It's as if the city is having a rash of buildings burning down because the firefighters are too busy staffing library counters and constant power outages because the line crews are too busy filling potholes.

@13 The Paul Pelosi case was a crime reported in progress. For sure crimes reported in progress would have a police response. In Seattle crimes reported in progress of just occurred (IP/JO on the department's crime dashboard) are literally about 1% of all calls for service (which is not unusual).

@14: Nikkita Oliver explicitly ran on a “defund” platform, and it wasn’t a case of an opportunistic candidate seizing upon an issue late in the day; Oliver had argued for defund since at least CHOP, if not before then. So yes, when Oliver lost by 20,000 votes out of ~160k cast, that was a resounding defeat for defund.

NTK was an abolitionist, and she lost by ~10,000 votes out of ~150k cast. Not a landslide, but a solid defeat nonetheless. So that was the vote against abolition.

Gonzalez was the public face of Seattle’s failed homelessness policy, and she lost by an astounding amount for a race between the status quo candidate and the recent status quo candidate. Hence Mayor Harrell’s continued refusal to moderate his stance on encampment removals.

Honestly, you should stop trying to rewrite the November 2021 election results, and acknowledge the (relative) superiority of the Stranger’s approach: complete, outright, airtight denial. (“B-b-but one of my candidates lost in a slightly smaller landslide,” just makes you look pathetically desperate.)

@18 I really enjoy reading your responses to the die hards on here that still think some racist, right wing conspiracy threw the election.

@17 Let alone the fact that Ann Davison got as many votes as she did with the voters knowing she was an opportunistic GOP type in Seattle shows just how toxic NTK was. Had Davison run against Holmes she would have lost humiliatingly.

@17: If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve

@19: The only thing better than speculative opinion presented as solid fact? When said speculation requires a huge cognitive dissonance simply to exist:

“Had Davison run against Holmes she would have lost humiliatingly.”

Holmes wasn’t available to defeat Davison, humiliatingly or otherwise, because the voters had dumped him in the primary. Dumping a multi-term Incumbent in the primary is an incredibly rare event, and they followed it up by defeating the abolitionist candidate, in favor of a Republican. Those outcomes are exactly what we would expect from voters tired from years of City Attorney Holmes not enforcing laws against camping, theft, drug trafficking, and assault.

The only candidate who lost “humiliatingly” was Holmes, who’d richly earned it by aggressively not doing his job.

@14: “Mosqueda won by a bigger landslide than Harrell…”

That’s what we expect when a well-financed incumbent gets challenged by a complete nobody. It is not what we expect when the sitting Chair of the City Council goes for the Mayor’s office against a has-been who’s trying for a comeback.

“… NTK almost won (it took a ton of negative ads to elect Davison even barely)..,”

NTK lost, and not “barely,” to a REPUBLICAN. Say it, REPUBLICAN. The first REPUBLICAN elected in Seattle for decades. That’s how badly NTK lost: she could not beat a REPUBLICAN. In Seattle.(In the year Trump urged REPUBLICANS to commit rebellion and insurrection.)