@1

"...apparently everything west of a roadblock just outside of Chicago doesn't exist."

If you've ever driven that 2063 mile stretch, then you know that for about 2000 of those miles, this statement is entirely correct.

And let's keep in mind that Netflix also produced 2 seasons of Stranger Things, which regardless of what you might personally think of it is well-liked by critics and slobbered over by sci-fi dorks. So they're batting far above the "95% of everything is crap" expectation, never mind the even lower standards you have to adopt for sci-fi.

I moved here 8yrs ago. Do I see needles from time to time? Sure. Are there purse snatchings, assaults? Sure. Are these significant thoughts in my daily life??? Hahaha no, because I've lived in SF, Chicago and Miami and these places are waaaay worse. I also know the measures to reduce these vs the efforts and appetite are low and people just want arrests which solves nothing so, i dont think about the hellscape of Seattle other than to laugh at it with visitors and cabbies and friends with more urban experiences other than baby's first city experience.

Totally agree w/ Charles' and @1's take on the movie. Same category of SF shitty, though only on Netflix and not distributed by it: Singularity with John "WTF happened" Cusack.

@2: I have driven every mile of I-90 and I-94, and I love the drive from Seattle to Chicago. The bit on I-94 from Billings to Glendive is pretty boring, and again from Dickinson to Fargo, but on the other hand you basically have your own personal superhighway you don't have to share with pretty much anyone else.

@3. That's fair. But, Seattleites who've have lived here for 20+ years shouldn't be expected to re-calibrate their perceptions based on crime rates in other cities. The fact is: violent and property crime rates have increased >20% in Magnolia in the last several years (see: Seattle Times). Regardless of what things are like in Miami or Chicago, if you've invested in this city, and have a family to care for, any reasonable person is going to be alarmed by the increase.

People who think Seattle is some crime-ridden hellscape have either never lived in any other major city in the US or didn't live HERE from 1975-1999. It's infinitely safer and cleaner now.

@5 HAHAHAHA. There have been some noticeable spikes in property crime, but that's it. Jesus. You can't look at three of four or even five years of a few spikes and determine if crime is up. Statistics don't work that way, man.

First: Seattle population has GROWN 20%, or 114,000 more people, since 2001. So of course there are going to be increases in all sorts of social problems. There are more people to have problems.

Second: There is no data what-soever to support that the long term trends are to higher violent crime. none. Zero. Nada. In fact the opposite.

Crime rates down in most Seattle neighborhoods.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/crime-rates-down-in-most-seattle-neighborhoods-but-theres-a-big-divide-between-north-and-south/

27 years of data: Seattle crime rate sharply declining
http://socialcapitalreview.org/27-years-of-data-seattle-crime-rate-sharply-declining/

In fact NATIONALLY crime is trending down dramatically:
Crime Trends: 1990-2016
https://www.brennancenter.org/publication/crime-trends1990-2016

Great comment, 6. This might be a slight exaggeration but I always say Seattle's worst neighborhood is still better than many cities' best.

@8 Exactly. And man, THIS town used to be rough.

I can remember before Mojitos and Moscow Mules when the bars in Ballard were good for a couple stabbings a week at least. Sure there were fewer shootings but there were more homicides.

Man. I remember 1st avenue was gritty and dodgy as fuck. There more pimps. More street prostitutes. More angry violent drunks. More gay bashings. More serial killers.

It's just most the neighborhoods were insular and the nice middle class people were not out an about downtown past 10pm.

Everyone has rose colored glasses when they look back. It's just the way it is.

It’s good to see the Stranger and Charles are still outraged at the intrusion of actual democracy into the head tax debate. Having actual citizens decide things can only lead to problems, after all.

Meanwhile, since they can’t wipe that stinging loss from their minds for even an instant, everything they see — including, apparently, a really bad movie rip-off of “The Last of Us” — reminds them of just how awful the citizens of Seattle and our terrible Referendum petitions really are.

I concur, @1. Trash.

With 99% of the population of the ‘heartland’ (seemingly, inexplicably) vanished, the reunited, hapless couple finally (thank you Jesus) ends up in Baring (milepost 40ish), on the Stevens Pass Highway, sixty-some miles downwind from utterly destroyed, ash-covered Seattle; and yet, remarkably, no ash has drifted that far … having survived the Mount St. Helens top-blowing-off Incident (by being many miles away, westward [upwind!]), I know that your car isn’t gonna run for very long, driving thru all that nasty volcanic ash – the airfilter plugs up (you could remove it, but the ash will quickly destroy your pistons/cylinders), and that’s it. I know it’s ‘just a movie,’ but

Gawd, ‘The Road,’ as depressing as it is, is vastly superior to this silly, contrived waste of a good hour – all for one good shot (pictured – thanks!) of a devastated Seattle, from a couple miles south on I-5. Watch it if your threshold for suspending disbelief is higher that the Space Needle.

If you’ve never had anything but petty crime to contend with and you suddenly encounter a needle* on the ground/sidewalk, then yes, you’re in the middle of a Crime Wave. (You can thank the very, VERY Wealthy fambly that owns Purdue Pharma for much of that, btw.)(speaking of Crime Waves.)

*if it is, in fact, the Space Needle, you're in deeper shit than a crime wave

@10

I'm not sure how you got stuck in a time vortex or whatever is going on there, but to those of us out here on Earth Prime you look like you're having an argument with phantoms from from 327 news cycles ago.

Have you heard there's a youth soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand?

@12: Have you heard there’s a really bad movie that looks like a Facebook page if you squint at it really hard?

No? Then take whatever Charles did before he watched Netflix. Maybe it’ll help with your obvious anger issues as well! (Side effects aren’t always bad things, you know.)

@13

Whoa. I was making a funny there, but you really are arguing with phantoms, aren't you?

Any sensible person can see the breakdown happening on our streets, and any sensible person wants city government to enforce its laws before things get worse. Fact: crime - especially property crime - is on the rise.

@15

Fact Crime is on the rise!

Man that is a much better phrase than "Fake News," and I'm totally stealing it. Fact Crime!

Actually, it’s Fact: Crime, like NCIS: Miami. It’s the name of my new cop drama coming soon on Fox!

Well, of fucking COURSE crime's on the rise:
Billionaires are stealing / have fucking STOLEN the Economy
and it's beginning to come down to Darwinism or Bust.

And how Bout all them brand new junkies (thanks, Purdue!), eh? Wanna give them dirt cheap heroin (and a place to use?) so's they don't gotta fucking Steal to keep it going?

I didn't think so.

I would charge that the data indicating crime is down or flat through much of City is just plain erroneous. Just walk downtown anywhere between the Market and Pioneer Sq and tell me how long it'll take you to spot a drug transaction? We went to my daughters concert at Benroya Hall last month and in the 30 sec it took us to leave there to go into the Wild Ginger immediately next door following, we saw the exchange of drugs and money. Furthermore, twenty years ago when you called the Police they actually came in a reasonable amount of time. Now it's unclear if they'll even show up and the perps know it. My house was broken into about a year ago when I left on a short errand. Despite finding my front door open and my first view into house seeing that everything was ransacked and not knowing if anyone was still in the house, the cops still only managed to get there 5 1/2 hrs later. If you forget to lock your car, you can guarantee it'll be looted through before morning and far more cars are being broken into than they were a decade ago. Closed Neighborhood Facebook groups in my immediate area everyday show people stealing packages by day and prowling for anything not tied down at night and it's rare it's the same person. Again ten years ago and more, this was a seldom experienced event in my neighborhood. Then you only got a brief flurry of crime before the cops started more patrols and then the crime moved to another neighborhood. While it seems that many here don't feel a bit concerned about what other people are knowingly seeing and experiencing, this is without question a recent phenomenon say over the last 7-8 years. The ubiquitousness of graffiti, homeless trash and waste is still yet another worrying sign of what trend line this city is following. Again twenty years ago there was no graffiti in my neighborhood, now as soon as old graffiti is removed or a new cement wall is up it's tagged. And there is nothing better in having hypodermic needles littered on the sidewalk around your neighborhood Elementary School. Again, less than a couple years ago, this was never occurring either. Again, I think much of the property crime is going unreported as the police are conspicuously absent. But why take the time to report anything as it's just continues to get worse to worse all around. Seriously what's the use? The police don't respond, the local paper says there isn't a problem and the Mayor and City Council maintain all is fine and dandy. You wonder where all the apathy comes from. A lot of people are now sadly resigned to this is how is going to be. After all, we're not as bad a Baltimore or Camden, so what's the problem?

Lol to all these newbie snowflakes.

@15 Just declaring something a fact doesn’t make it so.

Above I linked to, you know, actual data that disproves Seattle is less safe now than historically. Jesus Christ. You can actually look this shit up, you know.

There has been recent spikes in property crime. But the violent crime rate is way down from Seattle’s historical 30 year past. And the trend is the overall crime rate falling. THAT’S a god damned fact with data. Not pearl clutching anecdotes. But. Actual. Real. Data.

This paranoia you’re pushing total KIRO hysteria.

(I think the real problem is people don’t understand how to interpret real data. And they don’t understand what “rate” means. They think “there are videos of packages getting stolen! Oh. No. Rape must be everywhere!” When the FACT is the volume of home delivery has quadrupled in recent years and cheap home survailence video accessible on the web is recent. And our for-shit local news loves ready made viral clips for their own web content - also recent. So it FEELS like all this shit is just happening now. But it’s not. It was always there. And most people used to never report it. )

I didn’t need any fancy equipment or web apps to see the illegal encampments last year, under the Spokane Street viaduct and by the 1st Avenue S. viaduct, at the south end by the rail yards. Clearly visible in both places were the frames from stolen, chopped-up bicycles, piled nice and high.

There’s really no point in citing police statistics when we all know property crimes are going under-reported. Saying that overall things are better now doesn’t return any of the stolen packages. Saying at least we’re not some East Coast hellhole just insults everyone who knows Seattle is a West Coast City.

Why are there still any illegal encampments? How much more evidence do we need of property thefts fueling drug habits in them? What is more important than getting people out of these places?

@20. No. We’re not as bad as Seattle from 1975-1997. It was far more dangerous then. This is a fact. For fuck sake you can look it up. It’s just that crime then was more confined to neighborhoods and times that white upper middle class ninnies didn’t care about.

We’ve added over 120,000 people to the city since then. Crime has now spread out more evenly since all the traditional ‘hoods have been gentrified. And these once insular neighborhoods have turned over with more and younger people. When that happens you get that superficial crime like graffiti because PROPERTY owners become corporatized and younger more transient tech workers they rent to are less and less connected with community and more and more concerned with short term profit so shit like graffiti sticks around longer. And of course the rate police enforcement hasn’t kept up with population growth so petty crime in everyone’s neighborhood except the richest (like mine) gets deprioritized.

“Crime” is falling in general. It’s inarguable.

Homelessness is up because of the success of the city - market forces making rent too expensive and other regions shipping out their homeless here. But the rate here has been worse. You just didn’t see it because they were all downtown.

So. No. Crime here is still low. And with a historically low unemployment rate it’s trending lower.

Sure. That could change. If the economy crashes. Then you’d have worst of both worlds. An expensive city (until the correction catches up with property values) and no jobs. Then you will see REAL crime like there used to be. Then you’ll have something to complain about.

Yeah. You don’t need any proof. You just feel it in your gut!

There were 69 homicides in Seattle in 1994, the peak year. That's 12.7 per 100,000 people. In 97, it was 49 homicides, or 9.2 per 100,000. In 2000, only 25 people were killed, 6 per 100,000; the population was 570,000.

In 2010 there were 610,000 people, and 19 homicides, a rate of only 3.1 per 100,000. So one fourth the rate of 1997. Then in 2016, 18 homicides, 2.6 per 100,000.

There were 589 cars stolen per 100,000 people in 2016, by the way. 1,478 per 100,000 in 2000, and 1,660 per 100,000 in 2005, the peak year. 1,088 burglaries per 100,000 in 2016, down from 3,490 in 1987. If you knew one person who was burglarized this year, you would have known three in '87.

Anybody who brags about bing an old timer who knows how much worse things have gotten is full of shit. Google probably transferred their ass up here last year. Poser.

The problem with the stats is everyone has given up reporting the property crime, because they know it does no good. I had a bicycle stolen from my building’s secure garage. I called the non-emergency hotline. They said they couldn’t send an officer out - I should just report it online. Why bother? Two weeks later, I saw a guy I’ve seen in the greenbelt above 99 riding my bike. I know by the time I call the cops, he’ll be long gone. So it’s nice that my experience was a statistical anomaly, but it doesn’t change my personal reality.

I find it mildly hilarious that the "but my personal experience invalidates thousands of statistically sound, well-replicated crime rate studies" anecdote is almost invariably a bicycle theft.

Bike theft has always been common as dirt. Go on, if you like anecdotes-- ask anyone over 40 who grew up in a large city whether they knew any kids who'd had their bikes stolen. Make sure you've refreshed your drink and made yourself comfortable in your seat, first.

Bicycle thefts in major cities have never been aggressively investigated by the police. It wasn't until the '70s or '80s that many cities even set up bike serial number registries (which, surprise surprise, nobody used). If anything, bike theft today is probably reported at higher rates today than it was 30 years ago.

Of course, back in the day it was just "black kids" supposedly stealing all the bikes, not these complicated needle-hoboes you hear about now with their mysterious compulsion to tear apart dozens of perfectly usable bikes and build 20-foot mounds out of the resulting scrap metal.

@29

If they had sent a cop out to your building, what exactly would you have wanted them to do for you? Take a pen and fill in the blanks on a form, right? And it couldn't have been done just as efficiently by you on a web site? And if you couldn't even be bothered to do that much, why should anyone care? It sounds like it wasn't important enough to you to spend a few minutes typing some information into an online form.

And later, when you saw the guy on a bike in the woods, what exactly would you have liked? A helicopter? A dozen officers to surround the greenbelt? Bloodhounds?

(Asking for a friend whose taxes pay for cop time.)

“… complicated needle-hoboes … build … 20-foot mounds of … scrap metal.” --31

My god, we’re gonna need an Anthropologist.

@33: “a majority of the newly accepted crimes” [sorry Swampy – which crimes?] are committed by camper junkies who have exploded onto the scene here of the last 5-10 years. [they lost their Jobs (and Homes) when corporate America shipped their jobs overseas; or when multi-national corps strip-mined forests (and destroyed fish habitat) and we just said NO; or when Big Finance figured out ways to acquire and then suck the Life (HUGE piles of CA$H in pension funds, etc!) out of companies* and, bonus, laying off tens of millions of Middle Class and Blue Collar Employees (Upper-management made fucking Killings off their stock sales); oh, and then we had the Stock Market Crash and Gee Dubya’s Great Recession – when Banksters gambled (with everyone else’s money) and Lost, and so Obama BAILED THEM OUT (but told the homeowners to fuck off). So, yeah, they’ve had some times. Shall we hate them for trying to ease the pain, or give them places to park, and live, like actual Human Beings? Perhaps they’ll no longer need to seek chemical relief].

“this can't be disputed.”
Indubitably.

*see: vulture kapitalism & mittens romney

Way to make Make America Great AGAIN! @ 34!!!

Speaking of Park Place:
And Apologists (like me!):
(and little johnny mccain):

https://www.google.com/search?q=new+yorker+john+mccain+front+cover&rlz=1C1CHZL_enUS760US760&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_1rzV0KbcAhVBy1QKHXDoC1U4ChD8BQgKKAE&biw=960&bih=473#imgrc=7VlZlFvggaJvjM:

@34: Oh please. I lived on Belmont in the 80s and later in the 90s and in my first place we had a nodding acquaintance witha smack addict that lived behind our house, and in the 90s someone tried to steal all the wheels off of my boyfriend's car. I was sexually assaulted in broad daylight in front of the Egyptian and had to fend him off with a bouquet of lilacs. The Husband lived in the Ramayana behind Dick's for 25 years and dealt with any number of homeless junkies and drunks who camped in their parking lot (now the site of high priced condos) including one who damn near died. I myself had to clear someone's rig off the hood of my car one morning that they'd been using to shoot up, and that was almost 10 years ago. Stop pretending it's somehow worse now than back in old days.

@38: Ummm as far as your snark about people with low paying jobs being forced off the Hill goes, my rent for a studio apartment in the 90s on Belmont was $500 a month. I was a temp, so not making bank. Today, according to Zillow, that same studio apartment, now a condo, sold for $825,501.

I get it, you don't like the homeless, but do not pretend that the cost of shelter in this town doesn't play a significant part in why there are so many.

@29 "The problem with the stats is everyone has given up reporting the property crime"

HAHAHAHA. Hey shit! Another "Just So" story by a panicked resident!

You CAN LOOK THIS UP! People report property crime MORE now than ever before. You can actually look these rates up for fuck sake.

@34 Oh for fuck sake.

When you get the flu do pour acid into you lungs? And then do you try to kill your doctor?

Because you're attacking the symptom of the problem and the people who are at least trying to actually treat the problem.

You stupid fucks keep doing the same shit over and over and expect different results. You keep pouring your faith into the mighty market when the mighty market is the one raping you.

And then you deny provable reality in favor of some fear mongered anecdote you insist has to be true because you see some bums in a city that has grown faster than almost any city in the US.

The hypocrisy level in some of the commentary here is nauseating! I love how you solidly embrace the holiness behind the "DATA" when it comes to crime statistics but willfully turn a blind eye when UW economists present a fact based argument that the $15/hr min wage leads to inflation and lost man hours that put the wage earner in a worse living condition than they were previously. If the DATA does not conform to your preconceived thoughts or notions...than it is disregarded and buried. You people stink to high heaven! FACT: My car has been broken into 4 times in the last year in Madison Park. FACT: I had to wait on the non emergency line for 45 minutes before an officer would take my report. FACT: They did not want to come out and take a report in person. FACT: I did not report the next 3 instances because I knew it would be of no use. FACT: 3rd Ave in downtown Seattle is a dystopian shit hole now. FACT: There are homeless service resistant vagrants in every Seattle Park. FACT: I was born in Seattle in 1985 and I can tell you with certainty that Seattle is much more filled with petty crime, trash, vagrancy, etc. Yes....violent crime is down. Livability due to smaller crimes has never been worse.

“...not these complicated needle-hoboes you hear about now with their mysterious compulsion...”

It’s not mysterious at all. They are stealing property (bicycles) for money to support their chosen lifestyle of no job, no rent, no taxes, and plenty of drugs. The components are stripped from the stolen bikes and sold first, since there is greater demand. The frames are stored in the hope such a big-ticket item is wanted.

I’m really wondering why we don’t sweep every encampment, every time. Maybe someone can stop arguing over the history and statistics of crime long enough to explain why we should tolerate illegal encampments?

(And no, there’s no evidence rising prosperity is driving local people out into the streets.)

@43

Have you ever heard of replicated study results? Weird science idea, hard to understand, gave me no end of trouble when I first bumped into it.

@44

"Maybe someone can stop arguing over the history and statistics of crime long enough to explain why we should tolerate illegal encampments?"

I dunno, maybe because not all of us are mean little cowards just itching to see the police beat the shit out of the poor on the evening news? I realize that's a growing demographic in Seattle, but for heaven's sake maybe you could quit your tiresome, petulant simpering for five minutes and try regrowing your heart instead.

@45: So, true manly-man bravery requires tolerating needless crime, and having a heart means doing nothing as your fellow humans steal from the innocent and rot in filthy encampments. Got it.

(I honestly don’t know which is funnier: that you mistook personal attacks as justifications for our obviously failed homeless policy, or that you actually seem to believe your spew of nonsense formed a coherent reply. Either way, thanks for the laughs!)

"Boy, I sure piss some people off when I suggest that they produce evidence that those filling our streets with filth and illegal activities by their very presence in some places, are victims of the economy, rent increases or anything other than their own sorry decisions to come to Seattle, take and take, and give nothing back." --Park Place

“All over America workers are asking themselves why, if the economy is ‘booming,’ are they forced to work longer hours for lower wages. Why, if the economy is ‘roaring,’ are they not able to afford childcare, send their kids to college or put aside enough money for a decent retirement.

The American people also want to know why, as taxpayers, they have to subsidize and provide corporate welfare to the wealthiest and most profitable corporations in the country. How does it happen that there are major corporations in America where CEOs receive extravagant compensation packages, who pay their workers wages so low that many of them are forced to rely on food stamps, Medicaid and public housing – subsidized by taxpayers – to survive?

During the first four months of this year, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, saw his wealth increase by $275m – every single day. Bezos makes more wealth in 10 seconds than the median Amazon employee makes in a year. While Amazon paid no federal income taxes last year, it has been reported that one out of three Amazon workers in Arizona and 2,400 of its workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio rely on food stamps to feed their families.

Disney made $9bn in profits last year and gave its CEO Robert Iger a four-year compensation package worth up to $423m. Meanwhile, almost three-quarters of Disneyland workers say they don’t earn enough money to cover basic expenses every month, more than two-thirds are food insecure and more than one out of 10 report having been homeless over the last two years.

US taxpayers are subsidizing Walmart’s low wages to the tune of at least $6.2bn each and every year. That makes the Walton family of Walmart, the wealthiest family in America, the largest welfare recipient in the country. Over the past five years, Walmart made over $70bn in profits and paid its CEO Doug McMillon nearly $23m last year – 1,188 times more than its median employee.

These are just a few examples of a much larger story about the growing divide between the top 1% and everyone else. In the year 2018, no one in America, especially those working for a profitable corporation, should be living in poverty or struggling economically.” --Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders

All them fawking Takers.

Take take taking, all the way to the fawking Bank.

@46 - You are so right. Letting people rot in filthy encampments is not compassionate or brave. Enabling drug addiction is not humane. What do you see as the solution? I don’t want to have to pay for massive treatment centers with my hard earned money. I already pay a fortune in taxes.

"I don’t want to have to pay for massive treatment centers with my hard earned money. I already pay a fortune in taxes."

Ah, seanat, then look no further than Purdue Pharma, majorly responsible for the Epidemic in drug addiction / suicides. They made BILLION$ in Profits, obscuring their highly-addictive, enormously-profitable OxyContin's risks.

(And how many tens of thousands have already fucking DIED due to this one small slice of Corporate Greed?)

Does the party of Personal Responsibility extend responsibility / liability to Wealthy Corporations?

“OxyContin maker used subterfuge to sell public on safety, targeted veterans, elderly, suit says.”

https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2018/07/16/oxycontin-purdue-pharma-used-subterfuge-targeted-veterans-elderly-suit-says/784193002/

All this harshness, directed at Human Beings suffering; and not a
fucking whimper toward fictional "people" -- who are CULPABLE.

Celebrating Mendacity.

(Do we Deserve this Planet?)

@49: Every time an encampment is swept, Seattle offers shelter space to the occupants. Very few of them take it. Just hand these refusers citations for illegal camping. They’ll leave town rather than pay.

For more details on what we’re doing for the folks who actually want our help, read the Poppe Report, https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/pathwayshome/BPA.pdf

@53 - Just foist them on some other community? That doesn’t seem like a great solution, especially if other cities follow suit. If Sultan kicked out the river people, presumably we would just wind up playing hot potato with each other’s homeless populations every week or so.

If the homess start getting threatened with citations and decide to take the shelter instead, do we have enough shelter spaces for everyone? Are the shelter spaces available today offered on a housing-first basis, or do many of them (especially the ones run by religious NGO’s) require sobriety before shelter? Is that why so many homeless refuse the offer?

You seem to have read up a lot on the subject, so curious to get your take.

@53 - Also, how would the city ever collect on the citations to make them a meaningful inducement? The homeless probably don’t have meaningful assets to seize or a credit score to worry about. Do you then jail repeat offenders? How many prison cells does the City of Seattle have? Would we then prosecute the charges, and do we have the prosecutorial capacity to do it? How serious of a crime does city statute make unlawful camping - does it carry a jail term or only fines?

I’m just curious about the practicalities, and it seems like you’ve given it a lot of thought.

@53 - I actually researched it myself. There is no law against the encampments per se. This city ordinance prohibits camping in parks: http://clerk.seattle.gov/~scripts/nph-brs.exe?s3=&s4=106615&s5=&s1=&s2=&S6=&Sect4=AND&l=0&Sect2=THESON&Sect3=PLURON&Sect5=CBORY&Sect6=HITOFF&d=ORDF&p=1&u=%2F%7Epublic%2Fcbor1.htm&r=1&f=G.

It does not specify penalties. That would seem to invalidate your citation solution as relates to parks specifically. Shoot.

There is an ordinance against interfering with pedestrian right of ways. If a tent is blocking a sidewalk, it is technically illegal, but in a grenbelt or parking strip, it is legal under current law. That would also seem to make citations a non-starter more broadly.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but back to the drawing board! I guess I’m just disappointed - you spoke so confidently and condescendingly to all the bleeding hearts here on Slog. I wanted to believe. I would have followed you to the end... sniff My god is dead.