Comments

1

City leaders are spineless. CHOP should have been crushed days ago. Send in the armor.

3

Yeah, that Florida kook's rant was pretty entertaining. Anytime I hear one of those nutjobs invoke "We the people..." in one of their diatribess, I just think to myself that we the people are a profound embarrassment to our collective self. I know those council sessions with open forums are a nice idea in theory, but maybe we're just not quite there yet as a self-governed society to successfully pull it off.

5

Super-saddened to hear about Bill's Off Broadway. It was a wonderful place. Consistently great food.

I think this is the first favorite haunt of mine that has become a casualty of the pandemic. I should just count my blessings, I guess.

7

@5 -- Mine too. When I was taking math at SCCC last year, I'd venture in there nearly ever night after class for a cool-down beer. The food was crap but the vibe was lovely. Bill's will be missed.

8

@3: You want democracy but only when its well presented? How elitist.

Every minute our elected leaders hear from their constituents is a taxpayer dollar well spent. Whether it's bloviating from a University professor on COVID testing, an angry neighbors over a traffic proposal, or a rant from an unhinged lunatic - they all deserved to be heard.

9

I don't really have an issue with our attempt at representative democracy, fundamental flaws and all. I'd just also like for society to mandate the administration of a simple IQ test for every citizen, passage of which grants them a license to exit their front door. Is that really so elitist?

10

8 Elitist? Funny you should use that word........

11

@9 I think before you do that you should administer some sort of competency test for elected officials as well before they are allowed to run for office. If you have listened to any of the council meetings here in Seattle you'll hear some equally crazy rants from our actual elected officials.

14

6
So, you have a lot of justifications for police arresting innocent people when they should never have been arrested in the first place. The legalities themselves are criminal.

You do not seem to understand the damage that this can cause a person’s life. This is another reason why this system is so dangerous to those that do not have the material means to protect themselves from it and why we have prisons bursting at the seams with persons incarcerated with dubious charges. The prisons are profitable enterprises for the very wealthy. It is another reason for the abolition of the criminal justice system and why we so desperately need change.

15

@8- Well that is a good point and it highlights a quality that all public officials need to cultivate- that ability to 'suffer fools gladly'.
My experience as a civic activist back in the '90's taught me I suffer from a blind spot here- while my colleagues would simply beam beatifically and occasionally interject encouragement while some whack-job droned on and completely lost their train of thought, I would just silently seethe and think to myself, "god, you idiot, this is painful for everyone. why don't you read a fucking book, educate yourself, you're wasting everybody's time here you moron"
People like me should avoid being in positions of public authority- eventually we will blurt out something inappropriate.

16

The plaintiffs in the class-action law suit have a credible case, and our sanctimonious council and look-at-how-woke-I've-become mayor need to answer for how they more or less ignored the concerns of these businesses. To be sure, the mayor understandably hoped to deescalate a volatile, complex situation--but the small businesses were given short shrift, and they've endured damage they didn't deserve. The city will likely try to settle with a generous offer, but nevertheless this law suit will give our "leaders" something to think about. "Who knows: we could have a summer of love"? "The people there remind me of my son, eating Tim's Chips and granola bars"? "It's like the Capitol Hill Block Party"? Our mayor's pathetic attempts at woke ingratiation failed these businesses, as did the non-responsiveness of our SJW council. Let the village scolds forever demonizing business understand real human beings keep their restaurants and repair shops and retail outlets going, and that the merchants have a right and responsibility to stand up for their interests. Good for them! And, by the way, the businesses that were trashed and looted weeks ago have been largely forgotten by the local media. A few stories for a few days and then "too bad about the damage, but I want to go check out the cool stuff at CHAZ/CHOP." Good for the plaintiffs!

19

The 4th amendment is intfinately negotiable around the word."reasonable". My version will differ from facts2 and the only way to resolve it is politics.

20

@8 A fine sentiment, but you can't have a functioning city council if it has to sit through four hours of unhinged ranting from its most, erm, concerned citizens every time it meets for weekly committee reports. Open government isn't open-ended government; none of this works without boundaries.

22

@9 - Your mandatory IQ test proposal dovetails well with my proposal that we make it at least as difficult to have a child as it is to adopt a puppy from a reputable shelter. We were grilled for hours before picking up our dog. Seems like providing a decent environment for a kid is at least as important.

24

@21 It's at best disingenuous to complain about the lengths to which the police went to keep protesters away from the East Precinct, but then call them cowards to their backs as they turn and walk away from it.

Another perspective here might be that the tactical retreat from the station is the bravest thing the SPD as an institution has done in a generation, and one of the canniest, too.

Apart from the Battle of Costco Parking Lot, it's the only time I can remember when the SPD has effectively diffused and deescalated a confrontation with protesters, and this was a much more effective political maneuver, too.

25

@21: "Nobody chased them away."

Weird that you live on the hill but you don't recall events just a few weeks ago. Mayor Jenny Durkan convinced Chief Best the best thing to do was to acquiesce for now and not risk bloodshed over the East Precinct. A move that may of you liberal "progressives" applaud.

So you want to champion the cause of fighting police brutality yet you also salivate for the fight with words like "run like petulant craven cowards."

Which is it? Actually, you don't know. You have no moral clarity.

And then you have to gall to complain about trolls.

26

6: There's no question those in government hate the 4th amendment along with the rest of the Bill of Rights as much as you do and have been passing laws and court decisions designed to erode it's protections for those outside government since the next generation of politicians after the founders came to power.

Now, government does leave a carve out for the 4th amendments original intent in the rare event they're charged with a crime. But why shouldn't they hate the Bill of Rights as it applies to the unwashed masses? lt was designed to place limits on their power.

Your statist definition of the 4th amendment is that it was written to protect the government from its citizens. That's a view that most police, prosecutors, politicians and judges would agree with. Of course, the spirit of what you describe above, that it's OK to arrest innocent people using facial recognition if their is suspicion is against the very spirit of the "General Warrants" our founders despised and specifically wrote the 4th amendment to prevent, but don't don't let history or the Constitution get in your way. In fact, it's been my experience that those who argue about the Constitution have never read it, the court laws pertaining to it and generally are defending a group of rights they imagined in their head that does not exist.

Most frequently, we refer to such people as either "officer" or "prosecutor."

27

@6 - the issue is use of AI at all in such investigations. The public has been educated by media (including shows like CSI) to believe in the near-magical powers of computers to "solve" crimes. Jurors can be greatly influenced by this, and use of "high-tech" evidence greatly eases the State's burden at trial. One example is the DataMaster machine used to measure blood alcohol levels in drunk driving cases. From a scientific standpoint it is near-laughable, but it is presented as a neutral and nearly-always correct assessment of the "truth" (the situation with the DataMaster is made even worse by the Legislature basically saying that the thing is correct by law).

We can expect that public perception that the computers are not wrong will spill over into other types of cases. If the suspect here had not been able to come up with evidence showing his innocence, and had been taken to trial, there is a very high chance that a jury would have believed the AI identification over his claims of innocence.

29

"This made it more difficult for these residents and businesses to go about their daily lives and schedules where they don't have to think about Black people getting systematically murdered by the police. "
What a snide, uncalled for comment from a smug little girl who lives in the one of the most liberal towns in the country.

31

Thank goodness we are closing CHOP. I think the police, politicians and the editorial board at the ST have argued effectively that all crime in Seattle is a result of CHOP.

With it's closer, we will soon see an end to all crime, all murder and all property theft that the SPD delivered on so effectively before there was CHOP.

Police, their Unions and the editorial board at the ST has argued for years that if we just give the police unlimited funds with no accountability we will all be living in a Utopia.
The police budget in Seattle has never been larger and the police have never been less accountable to the public that, well, let's be honest, works for them.

Yep, with the closing of CHOP it's time to just sit back and enjoy the glow of peace and civil rights protections the police have always promised us.................

32

@28 Your preference for a "brave" police force comitted to a policy of confrontation when dealing with angry crowds is duly noted.

33

@26, @14 - I don't think that anyone is arguing that the 4th Amendment allows cops to arrest innocent people just for the hell of it. The point is that the standard for making an arrest is lower than it is for conviction. There does have to be probable cause. There are going to be innocent people arrested, because all of the evidence is not in. People can be and are mis-identified. Witnesses may be mistaken or lying. The list goes on. That is why we have trials, and why the State has to prove its case.

@14's standard for making an arrest would appear to be the same as for conviction. Not only is that a near-impossible standard for investigators to meet, but the last thing you want is for guilt or innocence to be determined pre-arrest. You want that decision made at trial, in the open, when a defendant can see and challenge the evidence.

As for the consequences of an arrest, those can be and should be addressed by measures such as abolishing cash bail in most cases so that people who have not been convicted are not incarcerated and by ensuring that the fact of a arrest, without a conviction, does not result in adverse consequences (as in don't let potential employers or landlords ask about arrests - we're already doing that here at least wrt housing).

If you are actually arguing that NO ONE should EVER be arrested because the system is bad, you are, with all due respect, out of your fucking mind. Take a look at the article in today's Stranger about the Nazi who stabbed people on the Portland train. Would you really argue that there should be no system to arrest and deal with this kind of guy?

34

@23 - that would probably be a fine outcome.

37

@23: Yours obviously cheated.

38

You can always count on the stranger and their word smiths for thick hyperbole.

39

@35 Very well, please tell us about the approach you have in mind whereby the police would non-confrontationally remain in their station while an angry crowd converges on it.

Be specific. "There were a million possible solutions" is an evasion, it does not conjure magic wands into being which instantly transmogrify angry police abolitionists into calm, politically open-minded citizens willing to enter into dialog and make compromises.

40

@35: The order from the mayor to abandon the precinct in incongruous with your alternative fact that they "just ran away."

45

This past weekend in Chicago, a city controlled by Democrats for decades:
104 shot, 15 dead.
Anyone wanna protest about that? Black on Black crime is OK?
Anyone wanna defund the police?

New York: 500 hours of training to become police officer; 1000 hours to become massage therapist.
Louisiana: 360 hours to become police officer; 500 hours to to become barber.
...
...
Lack of proper training + a few bad apples = homicides
There is at least progress that the bad cops are being charged with crimes.

I disagree with Rudy Juliani on majority of issues, but if you want to have a safe city,
you need a jerk like him to knock heads. Democrats are all too soft on crime.

46

@45 So, that doesn't even make any sense. All those shootings with a currently not-defunded police force. Seems like Chicago is pissing its money away.

48

45

Yes, protests are ongoing in Chicago.

https://www.protestchicago.com

Yes, folks want to defund the police there. No, people are not OK with violence of any sort there. Efforts have been underway for decades to curb it. If you're so concerned, perhaps you could donate to a few of those orgs.

https://abc7chicago.com/stop-the-violence-resources-chicago-in/3894299/

Even better, you could support candidates who want to limit access to guns and/or dismantle systemic racism and poverty.

In any case, you should hit up your propagandist masters for new talking points. These ones are tired.

53

@42- We have a system where the standard for detention depends on your income now. It's called "bail."

For minor crimes (like shoplifting), bail is set relatively low (like $1000 - you can't and shouldn't justify a high bail for a minor crime). A wealthy or even middle-class defendant can generally post that. They are out that day and keep their job, etc. An poor or indigent defendant almost never can, and sits in jail potentially for quite some time. They lose their job and all of the other consequences that are being discussed here start to hit them.

The way to solve this is to abolish holding people on bail except in extreme cases (where the defendant poses a substantial risk to public safety, or maybe for someone with a record of not coming back for their court dates).

I believe (based on prior work as a public defender) that most people would appear for court rather than risk having a warrant issue for their arrest, which everyone knows will only compound their problems. It's certainly worth a try, and I am willing to accept the risk that a few shoplifters and traffic offenders will be roaming freely among us.

54

@50 - Rudy is DEFINITELY going to be some sort of legend, and not in a good way, when the truth about the shit he's been doing for Trump comes out.

56

"@26, @14 - I don't think that anyone is arguing that the 4th Amendment allows cops to arrest innocent people just for the hell of it."

But they do currently stop and harass peaceful citizens for the hell of it, then escalate the situation to justify an arrest, or shoot the person over "furtive movements" if they "fear for their life."
Police are motivated to stop people for a variety of reasons, to include civil asset forfeiture, wanting to feel up a pretty girl without consequences, or simply wanting to assert their authority against those who do not kiss their ring.

"The point is that the standard for making an arrest is lower than it is for conviction. There does have to be probable cause. There are going to be innocent people arrested, because all of the evidence is not in. People can be and are mis-identified. Witnesses may be mistaken or lying. The list goes on. That is why we have trials, and why the State has to prove its case."

The standard for an arrest should be lower than a conviction, but higher than "a feeling" as it currently is in practice. The police should need a judge approved warrant to arrest someone. Firefighters don't go knocking on doors to see if there's a fire. EMTs don't stop random people asking if they need medical help. Why do we leave it to police, a group that has proved repeatedly they cannot handle the responsibility of handling probably cause without direct oversight make that decision?

That is where the 4th amendment went wrong. The system was never designed for a roaming group of overlords with guns and badges randomly stopping people on the street. That is a police state and the Constitution was written to protect us from that. Unfortunately, those in power agreed to work on the honor system of self oversight and as expected we all see how THAT turned out. The police should stay locked up until they are called. They should not be stopping anyone without a warrant or responding to a violent crime with an actual victim. That will mean a lot less police, which is the primarily reason it's a hard sell. Government's never willingly give up there henchmen.

"As for the consequences of an arrest, those can be and should be addressed by measures such as abolishing cash bail in most cases so that people who have not been convicted are not incarcerated and by ensuring that the fact of a arrest, without a conviction, does not result in adverse consequences."

You have no idea how the system works. The idea of innocent until proven guilty is a quaint 17th century idea no one follows. The moment you are charged, police and prosecutors treat you like the scum of the earth. In King County they often call your employer to get you fired based on their accusation. When you ask for lower bail, the prosecutor and judge essentially act as if they are releasing a hardened convicted criminal and bail is set by the prosecutor (good luck getting Dan Satterberg to give up that money maker despite pretending publicly around election time it's all the judges idea). Your bank drop you under the "know your customer" rule under the patriot act. Your fingerprints stay in the system and the charge remains on your record even if charges are dropped. You still lose your bail money. Police get off on making arrests as public and loud as possible, so you get to explain to your neighbors and everyone else it wasn't real even though they sent 10 police cars to "shock and awe" the media. If it's public and your landlord finds out you, your wife and children are evicted.

You say all this can be "easily addressed" through reform? How, when the police are focused on finding more ways to public humiliate people they arrest and destroy their life than ramping things up? For them that's the whole fun of being a police officer. The ability to publicly humiliate people pre-trial without consequences while being protected from all of that by union contract when they are accused of a crime. In fact, it often takes weeks for a police officer charged with a crime to be picked up. Suddenly the DA is obsessed with "not making any mistakes before we arrest him." I mean, this isn't some low life citizen who voted for me. This is a cop we are talking about!

Not only do police refuse to reform anything you say is "easily fixed," they constantly and with impunity skirt the very few restraints we place on them because their are no consequences when they do.

We tried reform and to make "simple changes" for 5 decades now and failed every time. Perhaps it's time to defund them.

60

@56 "How do you think we should handle like speeding and drunk driving and stuff like that?"

What a great question!

This is the real failure of a 50 year blind dependency on the police to solve every problem through violence. We've lost the basic ability to develop solutions that don't involve state violence that results in a cop putting his knee on a man's throat for 8 minutes and 46 seconds with complete indifference as the solution.

It's like asking "what are we going to do with all these private prison cells if we don't arrest someone for something? They aren't going to fill themselves!"

For the roads, the solution is to design a road system around safety rather than our current system designed to collect revenue while creating the pretense for violence against law abiding citizens.

In Germany they have no speed limits on the autobahn because it's designed for high speeds. On roads that do have speed limits, like the rest of Europe they have cameras and civilians (non-armed people) who carry out road fines the same way parking enforcement in America hands out tickets without a demand to search your car, or shooting people for "furtive movements." Here's a great article on how it would work:

Why Are the Police in Charge of Road Safety?
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/why-are-the-police-in-charge-of-road-safety.html

As for drunk driving, we have made a huge mistake in how we handle this. We should avoid all laws that make you the crime scene because it leads to mass surveillance and violent over policing. Besides, it someone kills your family in a car accident, do you really feel better to find out they fell asleep rather than were drunk?

We should have a law against reckless driving that can be enforced by cameras and civilians the way parking tickets are (you get it in the mail). You don't need to set up checkpoints, violate the 4th amendment or shoot fleeing black people in the back to enforce that.

61

@56, I never thought the idea would move forward since it's a good idea and people wanted it, but the idea to remove police from traffic stops seems to be picking up steam in New York:

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/06/25/campaign-to-remove-nypd-from-traffic-enforcement-gains-steam/

62

If cops are not allowed to shoot peeps in the back, where then shall they find gainful Employment which indulges their sadistic side?

B. Is the trumpf campaign hiring?

63

@14,
You wrote, "The legalities themselves are criminal." By definition that's false. It's a democratically enacted Constitution, interpreted by State Courts (which are elected), and Federal Courts (where the jurists are appointed by a democratically elected President and confirmed by a democratically elected Senate). It's legal, by the democratically enacted laws. If its legal, its not criminal by definition"

You're confusing laws with rights. The Bill of Rights is not a list of democratic laws or it would have been called the bill of laws. The entire point of the Bill of Rights was to protect the states from democratic mobs passing laws against peoples civil rights and the 14th amendment extended those rights to individual citizens.

If you violate a persons 4th amendment right it is criminal, even if you get a mob of 51% of the population to make it legal. Otherwise this is an Iraqi democracy where 60% of the population votes to execute the other 40% and you have civil war. Under the kind of rule you propose slavery would still be legal since you certainly could have found 51% of the population in 1861 to continue to enslave the minority of black people. That would be legal, but criminal in every non-pedantic meaning of the word.

"Pragmatically, how else could it possibly work? You want them to be guilty before they are detained or arrested."

That's a straw man. You are setting up a false choice between arresting with a conviction and arresting based on he current extremely low standard of current probable cause. Rather than argue over the details, how about we require the arrest of a citizen to meet the same extremely high standards applied to the arrest of a police officer, prosecutor or judge. That's a lower standard than a conviction, but higher then "well after I help out a yellow ball, but dog started barking which justified searching his car, stealing all his money and placing him under arrest." This literally never applies to police prosecutors or judges. Let's apply that same standard to the marginalize communities most police hold in contempt.

"Are you suggesting that standards for detention and arrest ought to be lower, for the same acts or evidence, based on income?"

I'm suggesting it should be the same standard you apply to the police, prosecutors and judges.

The best solution is to simply keep the police locked up until they are called to respond to violence, or get a court ordered warrant to arrest someone.

66

64 Wow, Yahoo news. Well, who could argue with a well respected news organization like that. Do you have something from perhaps the Enquirer, or People magazine to support that?

Twice in the past decade (2014 and 2019) the NYPD has thrown a tantrum when the public tried to hold them accountable and they implemented a "work slowdown" do prove how much New York needed them. Both times he slow down was related to their murder of Eric Garner and both times both the arrest count and violent crime dropped in response to less policing.

NYC cops did a work stop, yet crime dropped
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/nyc-cops-did-a-work-stop-yet-crime-dropped/

In New York, Crime Falls Along With Police Stops
Police have radically cut back their use of stop-and-frisk policies. To the surprise of some, crime didn’t spike, but tumbled yet again
https://www.propublica.org/article/in-new-york-crime-falls-along-with-police-stops

This is the dirty little secret behind the police claim that the world will end if they all go home. By brutalizing the public they actually inflame rage and increase crime. That's even if we subtract for the large number of police officers who commit crimes themselves under the color of law.

68

67: You keep making these unsupported assertions with no data to back it up. You need to base your arguments on more than police folklore.

Policing in America is broken and verifiably making things worse. The two studies above support that and they are not the only ones.

More data and proof:
"Brutal Force
The full picture of police violence in America shows the cops are out of control"
https://thebaffler.com/latest/brutal-force-al-gharbi

In Cincinnati the community decided to close a prison. The police predictably claimed violence and crime would spike. The opposite happened:

https://theappeal.org/incarceration-is-always-a-policy-failure/
"When the jail closure was announced, critics feared that crime would skyrocket as a result of limited jail space, but the opposite was true. From 2008 to 2014, violent crime in Cincinnati dropped by 38.5 percent, property crime by 18.9 percent. Felony arrests dropped by 41.3 percent, and misdemeanor arrests by 32.7 percent. Engel noted that crime and arrests were already on the decline in Cincinnati before the jail’s closure, but stressed that “the continuation of these downward trends, uninterrupted by the jail closure, is powerful.”

Despite your tired talking points the data is no longer debatable. Not only is there no connection between increased policing and decreased violence, but there is increasing evidence showing that more policing leads to more violence, not least of all by the police themselves.

"De Blasio disbanded the unit responsible for, among other things, catching people carrying guns illegally, then shootings skyrocketed to a 25 year high. You don't see the possibility of a casual connection there?"

That is more cop folklore not supported by the data that is so commonly spread as "fact" on paranoid cop blogs. The notoriously criminal police gang known as the NYPD ANTI-CRIME UNIT was never disbanded. That was just another NYPD gimick
DISBANDING NOTORIOUS NYPD ANTI-CRIME UNIT IS A “SHELL GAME,” CRITICS SAY
https://nodefront.prod.flmcloud.net/2020/06/16/nypd-anti-crime-unit/
“They tried this same tactic before,” Cahn told The Intercept. “It’s simply an easy way for them to take a page out of the NYPD PR handbook and avoid real structural reform. And if these officers are simply doubling down on the NYPD bias and broken surveillance of communities of color, it’s going to result in more police violence.”
"In 2018, an investigation by The Intercept found that the anti-crime officers Shea is now assigning to detective work and community policing shot people to death at a considerably higher rate than their colleagues. Analyzing data from the Fatal Encounters project, the investigation found that despite their relatively small numbers, plainclothes NYPD cops were involved in nearly a third of the city’s lethal police shootings recorded in the nearly two decades after Diallo was killed."

You are welcome to ignore the data and argue that wee should base policing on paranoid cop folklore found exclusively on cop blogs, but don't pretend like you are making some data supported evidence based argument.


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