Comments

1

Durkan isn't going anywhere. Sawant is nuts.

2

@1 Durkan might not be going anywhere, but she sure isn't showing her face either, is she?

Sawant is looking at a crowd of politically engaged people and seeing a constituency, instead of a threat. That might not be as crazy as you seem to think it is, even if the crowd's demands aren't met at the end of the day.

3

So many whole people in that pic. YAWN

4

White, not whole. Damn you autocorrect

6

The largest essential workers union demands she resign, Sawant is ahead of the rest of the council which will score easy political points by asking her to resign in coming weeks. Even if she didn't there are multiple petitions for a city referendum are going around for the next election. Durkan may not be in the big seat for more than a few months at best. The same goes for Best.

When Durkan lied to the city about cops covering their badges was bad. When she lied and claimed cops would stop attacking protesters with pepperspray was worst. The nail in the coffin was blocking the council and residents trying to defund the SPD. If McGinn couldnt get re elected for simply not chastizing the SPOG, theres no way Durkan can after this.

The funny thing about her is she ran her election campagn with the writing the consent decree as her big achievement showing she was dedicated to reforming the SPD. Then when elected she begged Trump to void it saying that even though its requirements were never met, the police had done enough. World class con game, its actually pretty respectable.

7

correction: that should be "there are multiple RECALL petitions going around for the next election".

Whats funny is her only supporters left are the Pro-SPOG crowd that loathed her during her initial campaign. Republicans in the city always hated her for being a democrat, and are now jumping on the protest bandwagon to highroad her as being anti-Blacklivesmatter. Progressives never liked her. Neoliberal Democrats loved her until she started working with Trump. When Bezos came out for BLM, the writing is on the wall.

The only people who still support her are (strangely) the altright crowd and the cops, most of whom don't live anywhere near Seattle.

My bet: She fires Best in the next week or so, then resigns by the end of the month. You know City Attorney Pete Holmes is circling like a shark near a bleeding seal at this point.And he's right to. Durkan takes the blame, he can finally run and call himself a progressive reformer. Rinse and Repeat.

8

"When Durkan lied to the city about cops covering their badges was bad. When she lied and claimed cops would stop attacking protesters with pepperspray was worst."

People forget that Durkan was as a federal prosecutor. Prosecutor's have absolute immunity and literally lie with impunity for a living. Combined with a press that never fact checks or challenges anything they say and they grow to believe the truth is what they decide it is and they can get away with anything and as long as they remain prosecutors that's largely true.

Smart prosecutors recognize their autonomous, entirely unaccountable position within our society is unique and remain prosecutors, but every so often they come to believe their own press and run for higher office.
Suddenly their absolute immunity is gone and a media that always operated as their parrot start fact checking what they say and looking into the corrupt police departments they defended. You witnessed this when Kamala Harrris ran for president. The local California media allowed her to always answer questions she wrote for them to ask her, but the national media started asking hard questions about the innocent men she had put away and the corrupt police departments she refused to investigate. After the complete lack of accountability that comes with being a prosecutor she was entirely unprepared to answer questions her staff did not write for her in advance.
Durkan is facing the same problem as mayor. Her bald faced lies are no longer accepted as fact by the media they way it was when she was aa prosecutor and she clearly doesn't know how to handle that.

9

Durkan is looking pretty good to me.

I see fantasy overreach by “progressives“ and then backlash by the vast majority.

11

@5 Agreed. @9 Interesting perspective and likely accurate. Sawant is a demagogue who uses SJW rhetoric to mask her jealousy and egotism. But Seattle is a city full of liberals who need to beat themselves up over race, and supporting Sawant is one way six-figure-per-year liberals have of assuaging their guilt over faking leftist views as they pursue career success. The key is cultivate fearless politics; don't let the purity testers of either left or right guilt-trip you out of taking the stand you really want to take. Don't hate yourself because you want to be successful or recognize merit in capitalism (or socialism, for that matter). Sawant and similar politicians feed on others' insecurity, especially the fear of looking conservative in liberal cities. She's not deep and she's not good. Her understanding of capitalism is cartoonish and stilted. Her insults and condescension towards almost everyone in this city but her and her followers is repulsive. And yet, she has a large, fervent following, partly because "she stands for something" in a world of the wishy-washy. But dogma is not better than considered balance. It's easier to understand, though, and it gives those with meaningless lives direction and hope (Trump does the same thing with his conservative messiah schtick). Jenny Durkan will likely fill out her term. Will she be re-elected, work for Biden, or quit politics? Who knows. She has a campaign going for the 2021 mayoral election, so we'll see. And lots of good comments on the blog threads the past few days. I don't agree with all of them, but I respect the time and effort you folks put into your comments.

12

Durkin supporters in this thread rely on the non-sequitur that Sawant is bad so Durkan is good.

This is not an either/or. Council member Sawant is an incompetent demagogue disaster and Mayor Durkan is dishonest, incompetent Mayor who's spent the riot hiding behind the police and under her desk when she should have been out front leading her constituents. There is a lot bad about Sawant, but she know her constituents and does not fear them the way Durkan appears to. That may make all the difference.

13

@12 Thoughtful observation, Luddite5. Durkan is fundamentally a good person, but she's not necessarily comfortable in her role or straightforward enough in her approach. She fears the left; at times, she seems to epitomize those in Seattle terrified lest someone find out they have some conservative leanings. But... she is empathetic, and her kindness is not faked. And I think Sawant's gambit last night will strike many as tacky and overly grasping. Interesting to see how this plays out over the next few weeks...

14

@9 and @11, That seems more like wishful thinking than reading the room. Durkan was already running unpopular before the protests. McGinn lost his election for far less of a public outcry issue. Seattle politics mostly stands on the legs of it's vocal progressive community and it's monied center left neoliberals, with it's old money Republican republican minority holding up the rear. All three demographics have either turned on Durkan recently (neoliberals) or were never in her court (Republicans and Progressives). On top of all that, the council is turning against her. And wisely so, after years of criticism it's easy to gain political points highroading a mayor standing up for the an extremely unpopular SPD. Now that the donors (amazon and co) are onboard with #BLM, you'll only see more of the council calling for Durkan to resign.

I would say there's a chance Republican voters could switch and start supporting her, but even without with public outcry against police brutality right now, they wouldn't be enough to re elect her. And this isn't going to blow over anytime soon.

@8 Exactly. It also explains her coziness with law enforcement. Prosecutors are notoriously anti-civilian/pro-cop. I honestly suspect her contribution to the consent decree styled it in a way that it never would succeed. It certainly didn't add any teeth to stop the department from ignoring it.

16

Sawant is really enjoying herself in that picture.

24

@20: Oh you mean like what happened to Breonna Taylor? Cuz in this country it is mostly the cops kicking in doors guns ablazin', but nice try.
De-funding the police doesn't mean no cops. It means reducing their budget and allocating funds to the organizations and departments that have people actually TRAINED to provide the social services that are are currently dumped on the cops.
Cops should not be dealing with mental health issues
Cops should not be dealing with homelessness issues
Cops should not be handling discipline in schools
Cops should not have military grade equipment
Cops should not have conditional immunity for their actions
That's what it means, but you know that, you disingenuous tool.

25

@22:

So, why did SPD spend millions of dollars on high-tech battle armor if it won't protect them from a few plastic water bottles?

26

Is this what defunding looks like? What happens next year for Pride weekend and Block Party. Is that over now. Maybe someone should ask the SPD to come back.

30

"The police also assert that,"

Why do you believe them? Cops lie to protect themselves all the time.

31

@27:

Again, millions of dollars wasted on high-tech battle armor that apparently was designed by the same folks who outfit Star Wars storm troopers - if it can't protect them, then what's the fucking point of wearing it in the first place? Oh, right, because it LOOKS BAD ASS, even if it doesn't do shit, amiright?

32

@24:

Why don't you ask the folks in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Republic of Ireland, Iceland or Norway how they manage it? I'm pretty sure all of these countries still have functioning law enforcement agencies, since I haven't seen any reports of widespread looting, shooting or arson in any of them.

33

Sorry, @32 meant for @28.

35

@29:

Then riddle-me-this Batman: why were all charges against Ms. Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker summarily dismissed?

I guess we'll just have to wait to view the active body cameras from the SWAT team to determine whether or not the LPD is lying - oh, wait...

36

@29:

Then riddle-me-this Batman: why were all charges against Ms. Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker summarily dismissed?

I guess we'll just have to wait to view the active body cameras from the SWAT team to determine whether or not the LPD is lying - oh, wait...

38

Hope all these folks vote in November.

39

@14 It could be just words, but even that is enough. If Amazon and Bezos are publicly saying they support BLM, that's enough for the politicians who rely on their donations to openly support it too. It doesn't hurt that the current political climate is also on the side of BLM and highly disgusted at police actions. It's basically a win win for the council to go after Durkan.

@27 You seem to be fabricating arguments to defend your stance and the SPD response. There is about as much evidence people were throwing frozen water bottles as there is that the 75 year old man the Buffalo PD assaulted was staged (or the new conspiracy theory on the right, that George Floyd isn't actually dead).

You can do that once or twice in a debate, but if every response is just another made up assumption to fit the narrative you are selling, it looks like youre trying to convince someone of something. This being the Stranger, no one reading the comments is going to be swayed one way or another. And only 18-28% of Americans (depending on the poll) support the police responses to the protests. You aren't preaching to the choir, you're yelling at the ocean.

@28 You recruit by making sure the people you are hiring to have firearms and act in the name of the state are not doing so knowing their badge is a free pass to threaten, brutalize or even kill people they don't like. Police should not have qualified immunity. It's created a culture where thugs with a clean record and racists who want to get their rocks off attacking people of color migrate towards the police profession because it's the only one that rewards them for it.

40

29: "The police also assert that,"

"According to police" might be the only thing more dead at this point than George Floyd.

In the George Floyd report, the Buffalo police elderly abuse report and every violent police report since the riots started (and there have been dozens) it's the same pattern. Unprovoked police violence against a peaceful protestor, a perjured police report that purposely leaves out their role in the violence, video evidence released showing the report was a lie, a new police report owning up to what really happened now that video evidence contradicts their original lie.

EVERY.....SINGLE.....TIME!!!!!

As bad as police violence is, the real take away here is that police always, ALWAYS lie.

Every so often someone committing some harmless lifestyle crime asks an undercover officer "are you a cop" in the false belief a cop must tell the truth and identify themselves, but cops never tell the truth whether there is a crime, or not. They literally lie all the time. They lie to criminals, they lie to non-criminals, they lie in reports, they lie to the press, they lie to juries and judges under oath about events and evidence (it's so common they call it testilying) they lie to their families and perhaps most of all they constantly lie to themselves. It's not even lying so much as they are incapable of telling the truth.

If you ever read a news report that has "according to police" just stop there. You are dealing with a journalist who lacks the ability, resources, or will to fact check the police statement to identify the lie.

Honestly, I was just joking with a friend last week that "well, at least after all this people will no longer buy the inane "well according to police" garbage and rightly assume it's a lie.

I'm just dumbfounded that after all this, there is anyone still willing to make any argument about anything based on "according to police."

42

28: The idea that removing qualified immunity would prevent honest people from becoming a police officer is a canard and although it's a step in the right direction, it's also a canard that it would prevent or stop criminality in the police department.

The removal of qualified immunity would simply make them subject to 1983 claims when they violate the constitutional rights of citizens. Their defense cost would still be covered by the city and any financial sanction would be covered by the same. Change only comes with skin in the game and qualified immunity does little to introduce accountability among police departments that operate above and outside the law.

For just that reason, of the 10 most common things a police officer considers during an arrest, qualified immunity doesn't even make the top 10.

Excellent articles on the problem, and limits of qualified immunity:

https://reason.com/2020/06/08/the-attorney-generals-overblown-fears-about-scrapping-qualified-immunity/

https://blog.simplejustice.us/2018/06/02/a-defense-of-qualified-immunity/

43

20 911: (Recording) “we are experiencing high call volumes. Your expected wait time is 37 minutes”

So your argument is that things will continue to operate as they always have?

A constant feature in local news is the failure of the police to respond adequately to property crime. This is nothing new. Enforcing property crime is just as low a priority for the police as solving rape or murder cases, which by the way they have a spectacularly low clearance rate on (well under 50% for murder and under 30% for rape per Vitale's book The End of Policing).

The police are not, and have never been there to stop or prevent the violent crime that hits the middle and lower class. The primary purpose of policing is overwhelmingly directed at harassment and suppression of the poor and marginalized by arbitrarily enforcing harmless lifestyle crimes created specifically to arrest, incarcerate and suppress the poor, marginalized, and mentally ill while collecting as much asset forfeiture money from them as possible in the process.

Interview 100 people from the middle or lower class in Seattle who aren't rich enough to afford private security and who have been victims of violent or property crime and you will hear absolute disgust about how callous and uncaring the police where about the crime against them.

Now talk to 100 marginalized, minority, mentally ill, or homeless people and there police encounters are constant even where no crime is involved beyond how the police treated them.

That is exactly what these peaceful protests are about.

45

@44 And we have our daily double!

This term is defined as "the belief that white people are superior to those of all other races, especially the black race."

46

44 Wrong.

Australia, the UK, and Norway all have sizable immigrant populations as do Greece, Italy, Germany and a host of other countries where you can go weeks without ever seeing a cop, let alone being beet down by one for no reason with complete immunity given to the officer

America has by far more largest, most violent and entirely unaccountable police force in the first world with or without immigrants. I suspect it's because our police force is built upon a foundation of white supremacy slavery control designed to terrorize marginalized minorities into compliance.

I know George Orwell mentioned that the future is a boot stomping on a face forever. I think even he would be surprised how many American citizens identify with the boot.

48

For the facts on having the most violent police force of any developed country:
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/msm-finally-admits-us-cops-kill-injure-and-cage-more-people-than-any-other-country-on-earth/?utm_source=getresponse&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rssfeednewsletter&utm_content=The+Free+Thought+Project+Newsletter

American police shoot, kill and imprison more people than other developed countries. Here’s the data

This is the title of the CNN piece, unlike any other we’ve see before. And it’s accurate. The article brings up numbers from 2016 and compares them to other countries. The United States is magnitudes deadlier than the other countries to which it is compared.

A media review by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) found a total of 1,348 potential arrest-related deaths in the ten months from June 2015 through March 2016 — an average of 135 deaths per month, or just over 4 per day. (The review excludes deaths under the jurisdiction of federal and tribal law enforcement, and the BJS acknowledged it does not provide a complete picture.)
By comparison, only 13 people in the UK died in or following police custody in the closest time period, according to the country’s police watchdog. In Australia, 21 deaths occurred in police custody or custody-related operations in 2015/16. Those measures are the most accurate comparison to the US’s figure of arrest-related deaths, according to the UK Home Office. The UK’s figure does not include every death that occurred following police contact.

It also found that US law enforcement is far more prone to violence against black people as well. Black people are four times more likely to experience police violence when compared to their white counterparts.

The CNN piece stopped short of speculation as to why America’s cops are so deadly and why we have the largest prison population in the world. But that is where we come in.

Why is it that cops in America kill more people than any other civilized country? Do we have a higher crime rate?

The short answer is no. If we look at our neighbors across the pond in the United Kingdom, their total crimes per 1,000 citizens is 109.96. This is a whopping three times more than the United States whose total crimes per 1,000 is only 41.29.

However, police in England only killed a total of 3 people in 2019. Cops in America have killed close to 300 times more than them. If this doesn’t say, ‘hey we have a problem,’ what does?

American cops kill more people per day than England cops do every year, and they show no signs of slowing down.

But America has a much larger population than England and therefore these numbers don’t equate, right? Wrong.

China, whose population is 4 and 1/2 times the size of the United States, recorded just 2 killings by law enforcement officers in all of 2019.

We know that the Chinese numbers are likely higher as their government is not exactly transparent. However, more people were killed by American police in just the last week than were killed in 2019 in Germany, England, Spain, Switzerland, and Iceland — combined.

If we look at the total for the year, American cops killed more people in 2019 than the above countries have killed in decades.

It is also important to point out — with the exception of a few cases — that US citizens aren’t launching countless attacks on cops. Violence against police has gone down significantly over the last 3 decades.

51

47 Not surprisingly, I don't see a link to your statistics. I gather you got them from the Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer?

I see you don't travel much to Europe either. Your post proves the axiom that it takes a lot more work to correct misinformation that spread it, which is probably why you have gotten away with these racist junk statistics for so long.

Even excluding the large number of unidentified immigrants in Europe they do not count in the census, they generally include Middle Eastern as Asian (I noticed you made a point of singling that group out even as you were too ignorant to know it has a different geographical meaning to Europeans).

Of the countries I mentioned where your immigration numbers were wildly inaccurate:
Australia:
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook45p/MigrationFlows
Since 1945, over 7.5 million people have settled in Australia, helping to establish it as one of the most culturally diverse and multicultural countries in the developed world. Currently, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) estimates that 28.2% of Australia’s resident population was born overseas—a level that is considered very high compared to most other OECD countries.

UK
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-in-the-uk-an-overview/

Although the numbers of EU migrants have increased more rapidly than non-EU migrants over the past decade, Non-EU foreign born still make up a majority of the foreign-born population. In 2018, 39% of migrants were born in the EU. More information about EU migration is available in the Migration Observatory briefing, EU Migration to and From the UK.

London in the most ethnically diverse city in Europe with over 50% of the population non-white and born abroad. By US standards that means the cops must be raping, killing, and stealing their property on an epic scale? Oh, wait a minute, only 3 PEOPLE WERE KILLED BY COPS IN ALL OF 2019 BY COPS!

Norway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Norway
In 2017, Norway's immigrant population consisted of 883,751 people, making up 16.8% of the country's total population

While all this proves just how full of shit you are, I think it speaks volumes how many countries from the EU you did not mention who have a far higher minority populations with a far lower violent police problem.

While it's almost as if you were pushing some brain dead propaganda used to marginalize minorities that is so common among white supremacist police and prosectors in the Seattle area.

Go on, admit it. Which King County government agency are you working for and just how frightened to you get when a black man walks by? Easy with that gun officer.

54

50/51
The simple answer can be had by visiting one of those countries and having an encounter with their Law Enforcement. The main reason they have fewer problems is that they have stricter laws and consequences when those laws are violated. There's no ass rubbing and explanation how it was their fault for your fuck up like there is in the US.
Try pulling out a pocket knife or a Leatherman in Australia and see how far you get, unless you can prove you are a 'Tradie' and need it for the work you are about to perform.

55

@glorianna Ah, racist white supremacist trolling. The Stranger comment section never changes. I hate to bust your bubble, but most crime and most homicides are white on white in America. In fact, the White on White crime rate per capita is higher than the black on black crime rate.

"Moreover, it explained, “the rate of white-on-white violent crime (12.0 per 1,000) was about four times higher than black-on-white violent crime (3.1 per 1,000). The rate of black-on-black crime (16.5 per 1,000) was more than five times higher than white-on-black violent crime (2.8 per 1,000). The rate of Hispanic-on-Hispanic crime (8.3 per 1,000) was about double the rate of white-on-Hispanic (4.1 per 1,000) and black-on-Hispanic (4.2 per 1,000) violent crime.”"

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/10/23/white-supremacists-favorite-myths-about-black-crime-rates-take-another-hit-bjs-study

56

53: Describing your mental deficiencies is not an insult. It should offer you areas to work on.

Looks like we can add failed reading comprehension to your list of things for you to work on. If you "read harder" you will see I did address race and your misuse of "Asian" as a category, which has a very different meaning in Europe where it includes the Middle East, the near east and India as well. I also point out that the numbers you provided are pure fiction and unlike you provided links to support the correct demographics you have wrong.

I can provide more facts and data, but just as Hitler had his Letters of Zion and King County law enforcement no doubt has a long list of reasons to justify why white lives deserve the dignity they fail to offer to anyone else, you no doubt have a long list of excuses why your bigotry is justified. Flat earthers have a whole lot of data too.

At the end of the day you either believe all life has value, or like law enforcement in King County you feel it's for job to judge which doesn't. It's ultimately an existential question.

I think it's bad enough that prosecutors and police have built their careers on the belief that some lives have value and others don't. It would be a shame if we followed their bad example. We can do better.

"Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law – and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

59

Fuck sawant.

62

@2: "Sawant is looking at a crowd of politically engaged people and seeing a constituency ... the crowd's demands aren't met at the end of the day."

And both they and The Stranger have (finally!) begun to notice that CM Sawant doesn't ever actually deliver on any demands:

'Coming after a tense exchange between the council member and CHAZ members about the relative benefits of abolishing police or cutting their budget the night before, the moment represented yet another instance of Sawant encountering frustrated Black protesters who see her push to “Tax Amazon” and her call for the Mayor's resignation as irrelevant to their demands. If Durkan resigns, protesters said yesterday, they'll just replace her with another politician who won't listen to them.'

CM Sawant, like many well-off Americans before her, sees Black Americans as nothing more than a resource to be exploited for her own ends. It's good they are now recognizing her exploitative attempts at co-opting their anger, their activism, and their agenda for her own purposes.


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