The context here is that over the weekend in West Seattle, a group of currently-unidentified individuals fired off hundreds of rounds within the space of a minute in a park in a residential neighborhood not far from CM Saka's home. You can read about the incident, including first-hand accounts of local residents finding bullet holes in their houses afterwards, and the immediate community call to action directed at Saka, over here in the West Seattle Blog:
https://westseattleblog.com/2025/03/west-seattle-crime-watch-gunfire-investigation-in-north-delridge/

The West Seattle Blog is an excellent source for this kind of news, in case readers want to actually understand what is going on in their city.

“While seven out of our nine councilmembers did express support in 2020 for a proposal put forth by Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now to reduce the police budget by 50 percent, they a) never put anything down on paper about it and b) didn’t actually do it.”

Wow! The Stranger should really have a conversation with The Stranger about this, considering that The Stranger previously published an article criticizing city council candidates who didn’t support the city “living up to its promise” to defund the police by 50%.

https://www.thestranger.com/elections-2023/2023/05/12/78988983/seattle-city-council-candidates-pick-sides-on-defunding-the-police-kinda

So I guess what according to The Stranger was a promise to defund was now never a promise to do anything. I guess it shows that even their writers now realize how utterly toxic the Defund movement is considering they have switched from demanding that council candidates support it because it was a council promise to saying it never happened.

Bax, are you really that dense?

The stranger supposed the defund movement yes. But the reality is that it didn’t ever happen.

So now they are stating the facts that it did not happen. They are not speaking right now about whether they supported it or not. The point is that it never happened, regardless of who supported it, and to claim that it did happen is empirically false.

ass kissing sounds loud enough to echo off the Olympics back over to the Cascades then back to the city councils still pursed lips

MUAH

Defunding by not funding or defunding by hate - not much of a difference.

Saka's two big accomplishments are spending millions to remove a curb stopping him from making a dangerous left turn into his kids daycare, and this performative nonsense. He's a waste of space on the Council at best.

@5 you're right, SPOG are awful but they're just doing what they're meant to do. City officials that persistently fail to negotiate effectively against them (including the current Council and Mayor) are where we should direct our frustration.

"City Council Passes a Nonbinding Resolution Decrying SPD Defunding That Never Happened"

The resolution does not claim that "SPD Defunding" happened. It explicitly says the pledge to do so caused harm to the city. From the linked resolution:

"Through the adoption of this resolution, the City reverses any prior commitments or pledges to
defund or abolish SPD services or personnel which led to the resignation of hundreds of police officers."

The headline post admits the Council had indeed pledged to defund the police by 50 percent:

"... seven out of our nine councilmembers did express support in 2020 for a proposal put forth by Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now to reduce the police budget by 50 percent..."

Furthermore, the headline post minimizes the damage which the Council's attempt at defund caused:

"The police budget did technically shrink after the council chose to move parking enforcement under the purview of the Seattle Department of Transportation, but that simply moved the money to a different department. It did not do away with parking enforcement."

As the Stranger reported at the time, the Council's cuts, made in the spirit of defund, did much more than just that:

"Yesterday, the council finalized their plan to make over $3 million in cuts to SPD's budget. Those cuts included the elimination of around 100 SPD positions through layoffs, attrition, and pay caps on SPD's executive command staff. Their salaries for the remainder of 2020 will now be reduced to the lowest level in their position's pay band."

(https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/08/11/44266867/why-did-spd-chief-carmen-best-call-it-quits)

As the URL suggests, Chief Best said this action by the Council caused her to quit. (She was the only female BIPOC Chief the SPD ever had.) That story spent much virtual ink denying any causal link between the Council's action and Best's resignation, but they were cutting her salary in an attempt to pursue defund, and like many persons who have their salaries cut without warning, she took it as a message she should leave.

@8 Not only that officers took the council at their word that they intended to eliminate their positions and did what anyone in that position would do, start looking for a new position proactively instead of waiting around to get let go. It was only the fact that defunding SPD would likely result in massive lawsuits (both for violating the city charter and racial based job discrimination due to the state intent to reduce officers who were white) that the council backed off their plan. The damage was done however and SPD continues to be one of the most understaffed (per capita) agencies in the country.

However the notion the agency was never defunded is not tue. When SPD was unable to fill those positions in a timely manner the council in 2022 led by Mosqueda abrogated the funding for 80 positions. In reality they did in fact defund the police. Instead of cutting funding and eliminating roles they made the agency so toxic that officers willingly left and then reduced the positions the agency was unable to fill. You accomplish the same goal. The continued gaslighting about the damage that council did to this city is amazing.

"And, sure, it sounds great to claim that Seattle defunded the police..."

Again, the resolution does not claim that Seattle defunded the police. It does not even mention the funding cuts made by the Council in the spirit of defund, which the Stranger (@8) reported at that time. It does not mention the subsequent departure of the Chief and officers, even though reducing the number of police was the Council's stated intent in making the cuts. It does not mention (@9) the Council's subsequent reduction in funding for SPD positions. If the resolution had wanted to "claim that Seattle defunded the police," it sure passed on multiple chances to cite real actions taken by previous Councils toward defund.

"We get that most of the current council has never seen a pair of boots they didn’t want to lick,"

Actually, they have. Said boots belong to the Stranger, which seems really, really angry at just how dirty they remain.

@8, 9, 10 so if the cops all quit because the former Council hurt their feelings, shouldn't the fact this new Council has made this public display of affection (not to mention thrown money at them) bring them all back? They had a net loss of ~300 officers from 2019 to 2021, so we should expect a net gain of 300 by 2027 right?

@11: Good job staying on message, faithfully regurgitating the condescending "hurt feelings" twaddle. Try reading again the actions the Council took (not merely talked about) with the explicit intent to reduce police pay and headcount. (The quote is from the Stranger itself, so no need for you to wonder helplessly if the author was NATO, or a PR firm, or some child with a crayon, or whatever.)

As @9 noted, when the Council announced it was going to cut the SPD's funding in half, that alone started the wisest officers looking for positions in other police departments. I add that the officers most likely to start looking first would be the most ambitious ones, and the most accomplished at SPD would be the first to obtain positions elsewhere, leaving the bottom-of-the-bucket guys in SPD. So, the loudly-touted, then-aborted "defund" may well have led to a decline in quality of SPD officers, as well as in quantity. A loss all around.

"They had a net loss of ~300 officers from 2019 to 2021,"

Why stop counting at 2021?

"The number of officers within the Seattle Department hovered between 1,200 and 1,300 for seven consecutive years before dropping to 1,094 in 2020, according to data from the city of Seattle."

Wow. What happened in 2020? Have you any idea? (Nope, didn't think so.) Speaking of 2019:

"The Seattle Police Department has lost more than 700 officers in the past five years [2019- March 2024] and is at its lowest staffing level since the 1990s."

"The city hired 84 cops last year [2024] and for the first time since 2020, the number of officers hired outpaced the number leaving. In 2024, 83 officers left the department but 84 were hired. The year before, 97 officers left the department and only 61 were hired."

Doing this thing called "math" reveals that SPD had a net gain of ONE new officer in 2024, which was the largest annual net increase since the decrease to below a staffing level of 1,200 -- which began in 2020. (There's that year again! WTF is UP with that year, anyway?!?)

"... so we should expect a net gain of 300 by 2027 right?"

Why do you assume symmetry between firing and hiring? Especially after the Council made it clear for years they wanted to cut SPD's numbers?

Sources, in order:

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/mayor-bruce-harrell-new-seattle-police-recruitment-plan-staffing-reaches-30-year-low/281-e98429ee-fc88-47f6-8890-b961393e2047#:~:text=Seattle's%20population%20was%20almost%20half%20of%20what,to%20data%20from%20the%20city%20of%20Seattle.

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle-police-staffing-shortage-action-needed-councilmembers-say/281-c3f43855-f877-4ba9-a37b-aeaf27e1ec67

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/seattle-police-department-receives-highest-number-applications-10-years/5WRWOAGGKVAE5PJDXCNU6DO2HQ/

@11 The executive team openly threatened their livelihood and verbally committed to eliminating their roles based on illegal and discriminatory criteria and you respond by saying their feelings were hurt and calling them babies when they decided to leave a toxic work environment? You would fit right in at Amazon so if you aren't working there already I would encourage you to go join the ranks of Amhole managers who have the same level of managerial tact that you employ.

@12 "Wow. What happened in 2020? Have you any idea?"

Sure I do, the nationwide police staffing crisis started--emphasis on "nationwide." Also a global pandemic that led to mask mandates that caused some cops to either rage quit or get themselves fired.

@13 I would encourage all cops to leave the "toxic work environment" that is the policing industry. Whatever I may have said about the officers who quit SPD, I certainly appreciate them defunding themselves.

@14: 'I would encourage all cops to leave the "toxic work environment" that is the policing industry. Whatever I may have said about the officers who quit SPD, I certainly appreciate them defunding themselves.'

Please. They didn't quit policing. They went to other police departments. (Y'know, to alleviate a national staffing shortage?)

@15 if none of those officers left the profession, they all just played department musical chairs, how do you imagine the total number of officers nationwide decreased?

@16: Reading comprehension as usual, eh?

'Whatever I may have said about the officers who quit SPD, I certainly appreciate them defunding themselves.'

'Please. They didn't quit policing. They went to other police departments.'

Go ahead, do tell us how so many officers quit SPD, they could replenish all police shortages nationwide.

(The sad part is, you may actually believe this...)

@17 oh so everywhere else in the country was seeing a mass exodus of cops, but former Seattle police were uniquely devoted to the profession and all took new police jobs elsewhere. That's your theory?

@18: '...KOMO News found that a handful of police departments and law enforcement agencies across Puget Sound have received inquiries or applications from or offered jobs to current Seattle police officers.

'Detective Ed Troyer with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said his agency has offered contracts to five Seattle officers and are reviewing applications from 25 other applicants who are connected to SPD.

'36 Seattle officers have applied for position at the King County Sheriff’s Office since June 5, according to a sheriff's spokesperson.

'Everett police said at least 30 Seattle police officers have completed lateral applications and more have expressed interest, according to the Everett department.

'According to a spokesperson for the Kent Police Department, “Since June, we have had 21 SPD officers apply. Two have been provided conditional offers of employment and are in the latter stages of our hiring process."

'A spokesperson for Tukwila police said roughly 15 to 20 Seattle officers have applied for a position with their department.

'Bellevue police said they have received 35 applications from Seattle officers for two open positions.'

That's just in the period from June to mid-August, 2020. (https://komonews.com/news/local/morale-among-some-seattle-police-officers-sinks-after-protests-budget-cuts) As you know, the SPD's net losses continued for several years after that (and may yet continue in 2025). So there may be many more examples of SPD officers applying or going to other police forces. Which, in turn, would support the idea conditions in Seattle were even worse for the police than in other places. Like something particular to Seattle was making it especially bad. From the same link:

'At least 41 Seattle Police Department officers have left the agency since the beginning of June, and sources in the department say several others are lining up to leave after a summer of street protests and attacks by City Council members that culminated recently with a vote to cut the police budget.

'The department is also preparing for the departure of Chief Carmen Best, who decided to retire after the council's decision to slash the department's funding. It has prompted many officers to reevaluate their jobs with the city and the police department.'

Once you finally recover from having gotten gobsmacked at how the meaning of one sentence can somehow someway weirdly depend upon the sentence immediately preceding it, maybe you can find more examples of reality violating your skeptical pronouncements?

@19 ~3% of SPD officers applied to other cop jobs in 2020, wow great point you sure got me there

@20: That was literally just the start. And look at those numbers a bit more carefully. 41 had already departed, while there were many applications to other police forces in the local area. Your idea, of the departed SPD officers quitting policing entirely, simply has no support in those numbers.

@21 no dummy, after I made a joke about SPD defining itself via cops quitting you asserted that the cops who quit SPD "didn't quit policing. They went to other police departments." Burden's on you to prove that and an article about 30-some SPD cops applying to other jobs doesn't even come close.

@22: Actually, the burden of proof is upon you to show they left policing, because that's what you were urging them to do, and claiming they had done, @14:

'I would encourage all cops to leave the "toxic work environment" that is the policing industry. Whatever I may have said about the officers who quit SPD, I certainly appreciate them defunding themselves.'

If they took up police work elsewhere, then they were neither leaving their "industry," nor were they "defunding themselves."

Again, the only evidence anyone here has cited does not support the narrative you're pushing. (We all know that's your default value, and you appear extremely comfortable with it, but it doesn't actually absolve you of having to cite actual evidence.)

@23 actually what happened is you tried as hard as you could to find evidence that cops who quit SPD took other cop jobs, and the absolute best you could find was an article about a miniscule portion of cops APPLYING for other jobs, but you don't have enough self awareness to be embarrassed so instead you think you won something

@24: What I easily found contradicted the narrative you were pushing, and has been commonly known since the days the City Council wholeheartedly embraced defund.

You’ve presented no evidence of any kind whatsoever to support your claim the police were “defunding themselves.” So keep on trying to beat something with nothing, you seem to believe it (like defund itself) has been working just great…

@25 we know 700 cops left SPD, you showed that ~36 applied for other cop jobs, meaning ~664 did not. So the vast majority defunded themselves as demonstrated by your article. You helped prove my point and you're too dumb to realize it.

@24: "...cops APPLYING for other jobs,"

If you could ever figure out some way to stop letting basic reading comprehension from constantly going all soccer practice on your sorry ass, you might have noticed some of those cops had already been offered jobs. From all the way up there @19, so very very long ago, some words and phrases you failed to read or understand included:

"... or offered jobs to current Seattle police officers."

"...his agency has offered contracts to five Seattle officers..."

"...Two have been provided conditional offers of employment..."

And then of course, there's your whole helpless confusion over exactly what year we were talking about:

"...700 cops left SPD, you showed that ~36 applied for other cop jobs..."

700 cops have left in the five-plus years since the Council first lovingly embraced defund. At least (NOT 'approximately') 36 had applied for other cop jobs between the start of defund in June 2020, and mid-August of 2020, by which latter time, "At least 41 Seattle Police Department officers have left the agency..." So, in less than three months since that Council started publicly slobbering all over defund, at least 41 officers had departed, at least 36 had applied for other positions, with at least five of them getting jobs, and two others well in-process to new jobs.

I'm going to go WAY far out on a limb here, and assume you have absolutely no experience of obtaining good-paying jobs which require extensive background checks, etc. So, I'll do you the courtesy of informing you, the turn-around time on those new jobs was very short, and at least five (or seven, or maybe more) hirings in that brief time is not a small number. Furthermore, those numbers were just for SPD officers whose applications were for positions at ".. police departments and law enforcement agencies across Puget Sound..."; with no indication the investigation looked at any other police department, anywhere else in the country. So we don't know any numbers for officers who had applied anywhere outside of Puget Sound.

"...the vast majority defunded themselves..."

I'd ask you what evidence you'd accept for your claim being wrong, but we both already know the answer to that already, now don't we?

@27 I'm not gonna waste my time reading that wall of text when it's clear you have no evidence even one former SPD cop both accepted an offer and actually started work at another department. You have nothing, just accept it and let it go.

@28: Considering the wretchedly poor job you've done in understanding much shorter comments in this thread, I'd agree you shouldn't even bother trying any further.

Of the officers who departed SPD after the Council went all defund-y, you've claimed "...the vast majority defunded themselves..." So, you have to show "the vast majority" of 700 officers never took police work again. Ever. Anywhere. Good luck with that, because your repeated assertion it's true means absolutely nothing.

@29 no you

@31: So, in your world, when a workplace has toxic leadership, and the employees start quitting, every last one of them leaves their field completely, forever. Not one of them ever takes a similar job at another employer, even if hours, compensation, and commute are all very similar to the place they just left.

If you claim that’s how the world really works, then I’ll believe you actually think so.

@31 you don't get the last word

@28: "...evidence even one former SPD cop both accepted an offer and actually started work at another department."

Let me know when your evidentiary demands have escalated to quoting from the transferred officer's subsequent performance reviews.