Comments

1

The 911 call center out of SPD. Could be good, could be bad.

2

How about we defund the City Council?

3

It's a start. Every cent taken from funding the police needs to be spend on helping people - housing, mental health, etc.

6

Not a chance, guesty, not a chance.

8

"In the heat of the summer's protests, seven out of nine council members heeded calls from activists and committed to defunding SPD by 50%."

CM Lisa Herbold, seeking re-election last year:

'Regarding support for police, she says the “most objective measure” she can point to is continuing to vote for increasing SPD’s funding, plus back pay in the new contract, and hiring bonuses.'

(https://westseattleblog.com/2019/07/election-2019-talking-with-city-council-district-1-incumbent-lisa-herbold/)

When can West Seattle have the policy for which we voted?

9

@8:

You can have the policy for which you voted when West Seattle secedes from the City to form it's own little autonomous enclave.

10

@10: Why would our secession provide a different outcome? By what magic would that make it impossible for candidates to just flat-out lie to us to get elected? (Or, more charitably, put the poorly-thought-out demands of un-named activists ahead of clear promises made to constituents?)

Or are you implying our candidates would no longer be contaminated by the likes of CM Sawant, etc.?

11

On the day the SCC was busy patting themselves on the back for defunding the police a case worker was brutally assaulted and killed in Belltown. I doubt we'll see any marches in the streets tonight or anyone asking for justice for her. I wonder how many more people have to suffer before we stop enabling anti-social behavior.

12

@1 what a brilliant analysis

13

Obviously this is a far cry from the compromise position of reducing the SPD budget by 65%, but it's a start.

So, if we have any other budget shortfalls, or need to build bridges for cars, all that money will come from the SPD budget, right?

14

@10:

No, I'm saying that just because you vote for a district representative on the Council, ultimately they're still responsible for - and responsive to - all of the citizens of the City. Or did you expect her to attempt to hold up the entire $6,500,000,000 2021 budget for the sake of your particular pet peeve?

@11:

Your whataboutism is truly a thing to behold. The alleged killer has been apprehended and will no doubt be charged with her murder before the day is out. Then they'll get their day in court, their fate will be decided by a jury, and if convicted justice WILL be served - just as the system was designed to function.

15

Here's the Seattle Times story about the killing District13refugee refers to @11:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/woman-found-dead-in-belltown-seattle-police-investigate-her-fatal-stabbing-officials-say/

I don't know that this says much about the debate over police funding unless it's a debate over the craziest reaches of Defund/Abolish the Police.

It angers me to see the phrase "a deceased woman" in that story. Not to question the phrasing by the reporter. To me this case manager is not unlike all the people we now refer to as "essential workers" who've had to go out and work in the midst of this pandemic, usually for lousy wages and with limited safeguards, and who then lost their lives to COVID-19 as a result.

It is a black mark upon our society when our fellow Americans lose their lives to wanton violence just as it is when they lose their lives to a pandemic needlessly raging out of control.

16

For clarity. Shifting taxpayer resources to non-profits is privatizing those functions. The city is offloading in bulk authority with less oversight than if it was done through city departments.

17

@14 It's not whataboutism, its acknowledging reality. The defund and abolish mantra has been and continues to be that police involvement in these situation escalates and causes violence. Morlaes herself yesterday made the preposterous claim that the police do not prevent crime. If only we approach people in crisis with a more compassionate response they will respond in kind. Yes, the killer was apprehended and will face trial for their crimes but as we defund and begin to insert social workers into situations with people in crisis these types of outcomes will also become more frequent. There is a line between compassion and enablement and the council has taken us far past it.

18

@14: "No, I'm saying that just because you vote for a district representative on the Council, ultimately they're still responsible for - and responsive to - all of the citizens of the City."

CM Herbold represents District 1, not "all of the citizens of the City." (We have at-large Council Members for the latter.) I didn't claim that I had voted for her; I noted we citizens of District 1 had voted for a candidate who'd touted her funding of SPD as a reason for us to return her to office. After we had re-elected her, in part, on that point, she abandoned it, not because "all of the citizens of the City" decided on a new policy, but under pressure from un-named activists:

"In the heat of the summer's protests, seven out of nine council members heeded calls from activists and committed to defunding SPD by 50%."

So, after getting re-elected, in part, on promise to fund SPD to levels deemed proper by the citizens of District 1, she ignored her promise, and switched to slashing funding by an arbitrary amount demanded by unidentified activists. I ask you again: how do we citizens of District 1 get the policy for which we voted?

"Your whataboutism is truly a thing to behold."

It's not "whataboutism," it's questioning one of the many unstated assumptions behind defunding the police by arbitrary levels: that social services are better than police. Social services workers also face some of the same risks police officers do, and we need to recognize that when making policy. Assuming a person will behave better when approached solely by a social services worker, unescorted by police, can -- and did -- have fatal consequences for that worker.

19

Bellevue is a delightful and peaceful place.

20

@14: Your comment is absolutely performative whataboutism and typical police fear monger. It's sad you can't provide a more affirmative justification for police funding, but I guess fear is the only tool the police have left.

We could have doubled, even tripled the SPD budget for next year and this social worker would still be dead and the suspect apprehended.

In fact, the SPD budget is currently operating on a 48% increase over the past 5 years and the 20% budget cuts that just passed have not taken place yet and you already trying to correlate a murder with a future budget cut. You could at least hold off on the pathetic fear mongering until the budget cut takes place. There were certainly murders that took place over the past 5 years the budget was increasing and I don't recall you telling us the money was being wasted because the police had not ended murder.

"Moralaes herself yesterday made the preposterous claim that the police do not prevent crime."

Proposterous claim based on what? Your personal opinion drawn from crime drama's?

Multiple academic studies have shown there is no link between more policing and a reduction in violent crime. Here's two of many studies:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/07/over-past-60-years-more-spending-police-hasnt-necessarily-meant-less-crime/
"Over the past 60 years, more spending on police hasn’t necessarily meant less crime"
In 1960, about $2 billion was spent by state and local governments on police. There were about 1,887 crimes per 100,000 Americans, including 161 violent crimes. By 1980, spending had increased to $14.6 billion — and crime rates had soared to 5,950 crimes per 100,000 Americans and 597 violent crimes. Over the next two decades, those rates thankfully fell, down to about 4,120 crimes per 100,000 people and 507 violent crimes. Spending spiked to more than $67 billion. Eighteen years later — by 2018, the most recent year for which full data are available — crime rates had fallen further to 2,580 crimes per 100,000, including 381 violent crimes. Spending that year topped $137 billion.

https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Incarceration-and-Crime-A-Complex-Relationship.pdf

Social work is a effective harm reduction strategy that requires real personal courage, but we've had 6 decades of the police "shoot everyone who frightens me" approach to solving our problems and it has left the poor and marginalized more devastated than before and given us by far the largest prison population in the world. If we are going to fix the carceral destruction of the past 6 decades, we are going to need to support those capable of taking the personal risk most police seem allergic to. No doubt it will cost some courageous heroes their lives, but going in and shooting the place up and locking the survivors in cages is hardly an effective strategy.

As Will in Seattle stated, a 20% reduction for the SPD to fund harm reduction organizations is a good start on the long road to police reform by tearing down corrupt police unions, removing qualified immunity, demilitarized the police force, stopping mass incarceration and ultimately developing a legal code where the police are no longer exempted from punishment for the violent crimes civilians regularly go to prison for committing.

It's a start.

21

The above was addressed to @11, not @14.

22

You freaking morons. This money is not going to help anyone in need. It's just a redistribution of salaries to activists to administer yet to be determined "social programs" which will probably be just as effective as what we have now, which is crap. No accountability anywhere in here.

23

@18: "Social services workers also face some of the same risks police officers do, and we need to recognize that when making policy."

Social service workers don't face "some of the same risks" the police do, they face greater risk for far less pay because they are not trained to initiate violence at the slightest provocation for their own safety at the expense of everyone else.

That's the personal price social workers knowingly accept in wanting to help people rather than save them, which means listening to them instead of demanding what they will do, then twisting their arms into compliance and/or locking them in cages when they fail to comply.

Social workers are not alone in the risks they take. Postal workers manage to deliver mail all year long without executing family dogs in high numbers the way police do when they serve a warrant. Fire Fighters stop fires and save lives without knocking on every door and asking if there is a fire as a pretext to initiate violence over some other "crime."

All throughout society people manage to do what police claim they do, but with better outcomes and far less violence and incarceration. The police are a very specific tool for a very specific purpose. They are used as the wrong tool 95% of the time and the consequences for society are devastating.

It's not a mistake this social worker did not have a police officer with them when they were performing their duties. Most social workers knowingly don't invite the police along because they know the people they help are regularly victimized by the police. The police have a gift for escalating violence and making things worse. Even if a police officer had been there, the social worker would be just as dead. The police would simply have added a dead suspect to the pile of bodies.

Social workers will tell you they need more funding, not to lose their funding to more police combat troops. You dishonour the memory of this social worker when you use their death as an excuse to pull funding from from the kind of social work programs that make a difference this social worker supported.

As for your overuse of the "arbitrary" budget cuts, the increases over the past 6 decades have been just as arbitrary. Despite a steep increase in police funding, they have done nothing over the past 6 years to make us safer.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/07/over-past-60-years-more-spending-police-hasnt-necessarily-meant-less-crime/
"Over the past 60 years, more spending on police hasn’t necessarily meant less crime"
In 1960, about $2 billion was spent by state and local governments on police. There were about 1,887 crimes per 100,000 Americans, including 161 violent crimes. By 1980, spending had increased to $14.6 billion — and crime rates had soared to 5,950 crimes per 100,000 Americans and 597 violent crimes. Over the next two decades, those rates thankfully fell, down to about 4,120 crimes per 100,000 people and 507 violent crimes. Spending spiked to more than $67 billion. Eighteen years later — by 2018, the most recent year for which full data are available — crime rates had fallen further to 2,580 crimes per 100,000, including 381 violent crimes. Spending that year topped $137 billion."

24

@20/23 Law enforcement and social work and not mutually exclusive items. No one here is arguing for a massive expansion of the police. The argument is with the preposterous notion that you can abolish the police or that police actually cause crime. The studies you cite that correlate increases in crime statistics with increases in police funding does not mean police are ineffective. There are many possible explanations for that trend. One being that an increase in police has led to more reporting and investigation of previous crime that was unreported. You are one of those people who would gaslight us by telling everyone property crime in Seattle is not an issue when anyone with eyes knows that its not the incidents of crime are going down its that people are giving up because the police do not have the resources to respond.

Whether you outsource the responsibility to a private organization or not there is going to be a need for a law enforcement function. If you do not staff it appropriately you will have service issues plain and simple. The Seattle Times published an article earlier this month that shows Seattle has on average 18.5 officers per resident. The average of the top 50 cities is 26.9 so we are already on the low side and now you want to reduce it further on the pretense that by removing police crime itself will go down. I don't need a study to know that doesn't pass the bullshit test. There was never a conversation about what the appropriate level of staffing should be for the police just a knee jerk reaction and childish slogan to reduce it by 50%.

So now we are left with a police force in disarray, promises of programs that don't even exist to take their place and zero accountability or transparency for the organizations in line to receive this money and those who continue to do harm against the community through their actions. If you want to take it on faith that all this is going to lead to better outcomes for those in distress or those now tasked with helping them then that is your choosing. I for one am extremely skeptical that this council has any idea what they are doing and people like you who continue to attack those of us questioning the logic and obfuscating the actual issues are more part of the problem than part of the solution.

26

@24: "Law enforcement and social work and not mutually exclusive items."

Experience and social workers themselves would tell you are two entirely different things based on 2 fundamentally different models. Social work like medicine is based on harm reduction, or helping people. Law Enforcement like incarceration is based on harm escalation, or using the state monopoly of violence to hurt people. We have tried the hurting and stigmatizing model for 6 decades and it has been an abysmal failure by any metric you want to choose. It's why the rest of the 1st world has moved away from that failed model.

"No one here is arguing for a massive expansion of the police."

That horse left the barn on that a long time ago. We have already had a massive expansion in police spending and decrease in police accountability over the past 6 decades. You are arguing to sustain unsustainable spending that has reached the point of doing more harm than good some time ago. You have entirely lost the support of the population you police and now need to depend on scare tactics and constant copoganda from the major media outlets and Hollywood to convince easily frightened suburbanites and rich people that the devil is at the door and only the police can protect them. It's no different than the fear based arguments the slave gangs made to frightened white voters to institutionalize slavery.

In 1960 we spent about $2 billion on all state and local governments on police. Spending that year topped $137 billion. Even adjusting for inflation that is a massive increase with crime rates close to where they were in the early 1960's and that's not including the massive hauls taken in through asset forfeiture.

Much of that massive run up occurred since the mid 1990's when violent crimes has dropped dramatically and harmless lifestyle crimes like drug use crimes has expanded. American policing has always had a strong social control element to it and the explosion in lifestyle crimes over the past 6 decades combined with asset forfeiture has only fuelled the problem. It's a little late to say "no one is talking about a massive explosion in police. The arbitrary increase in police budgets over the past 6 decades has done nothing to keep us safer, but it has given us a massive prison population. I don't call that progress.

"The argument is with the preposterous notion that you can abolish the police or that police actually cause crime."

My argument was to reduce the police drastically so they focus on real crime, not abolish them. I did not make the argument that police actually cause crime because that's hard to prove beyond the anecdotal evidence that on a daily basis the police do commit a lot of crimes, most involving rape and violence. Still, one could argue they would commit those same crimes even if they were not in the police, so it's a hard argument to prove. I did not make that claim here.

"The studies you cite that correlate increases in crime statistics with increases in police funding does not mean police are ineffective."

That is not what these studies show. These study show no correlation between police funding and a reduction in crime. Crime goes up and down and police funding go up and down and they do not correlate. Remember, I was responding to this comment you made:

"Moralaes herself yesterday made the preposterous claim that the police do not prevent crime."

Based on these studies Moralaes is accurate. Spending on police does not prevent crime. There is no evidence to the contrary.

"You are one of those people who would gaslight us by telling everyone property crime in Seattle is not an issue"

No, I would tell you SPD has shown little interest in dealing with property crime despite an almost 50% increase in their budget over the past 5 years. More troubling, the seem to have a low interest in solving murder, rape and assault cases as well despite that almost 50% increase in their budget:

Thousands of rape kits gathering dust will now get tested:
https://mynorthwest.com/1357655/rape-kits-bill-passes-washington-state/

"The average of the top 50 cities is 26.9 so we are already on the low side and now you want to reduce it further on the pretense that by removing police crime itself will go down."

Yes, too many police is an epidemic of most American cities, but even here it makes no sense to compare officer staffing without comparing crime rates. Seattle is not Mogadishu no matter how hard the police try to sell it as that when the toss some homeless kid. You used a single murder of a social working to justify why a budget cut that has not even taken effect after 5 straight years of budget increases is currently making us less safe. It doesn't take an expert to see how blatantly opportunistic that kind of argument is.

"So now we are left with a police force in disarray, promises of programs that don't even exist to take their place and zero accountability or transparency for the organizations in line to receive this money."

The police have had increasing budgets for 6 decades with not only no accountability, but less accountability each decade culminating with their attack in the 1st amendment rights of the mostly peaceful protestors this Summer. The police are in no position to the point the finger at another organization and talk about a "lack of accountability."

@25 "I'm sure providing more services will work this time around. It's not like working people need that money"

For 6 decades straight police spending had heavily outstripped spending on social programs and it was not worked out. Our police have never had more direct power and surveillance over their citizens combined with the lack of accountability at any other time is history. There argument is once again they need more money, more power and more accountability to fix things.

How many more decades are you willing to wait as the police continue to make things worse? We can argue over how effective social programs are, but we know it will reduce the prison population. That alone would be a major win.

27

@26 you need a tl:dr on that post. I’m not
Going to respond because it’s clear we aren’t going to find common ground here. We’ll just have to let it play out and see who ultimately is correct. My only hope is whatever programs are created to satisfy the mobs blind hatred of the police dont create more harm than is happening now. There are some very real people who are going to be impacted by your grand social experiment.

30

@23 - "As for your overuse of the "arbitrary" budget cuts, the increases over the past 6 decades have been just as arbitrary. Despite a steep increase in police funding, they have done nothing over the past 6 years to make us safer."

There's actually no way either we or that study can possibly know that. That's because we don't know what did not happen. That is to say, if there had been no increase in police funding, what would have been the results? There's no way to know. What if there had been a decrease? Again, no way to know.

My personal suspicion based on personal and professional experience is that crime would have been worse than it historically was, but that's just my opinion, Man. Yet again, because there's no way to know that, either.

Although, when the size of police departments really started ramping up in the mid to late 90's (mine nearly doubled in size) immediately preceded the great crime reduction in the years afterward, 2000-2010. Sure, that could be coincidence and due to other factors. My own view is that increased levels of police presence was "a" factor, not the sole one by any means, of course, but an important one.

31

@27: Fair enough. I think we both presented our case. No need for things to degrade into the kind of personal insults I have sometimes caught myself participating in. My personal opinion is that I don't see the extremist setting the agenda on this topic. Most of us are arguing between the 20 yard line markers. That's where most policy is set. I'm actually surprised for the first time in my life we are talking about what size the police should be. I'm in my 60's and until recently it was taken as an article if faith police spending would always grow. The idea of sustaining a police budget, let alone shrinking it was not even open for discussion.

@30: You're right that counter-factuals really can't be argued. The numbers we have show that as police spending increased consistently year over year for 6 decades the crime rate went up, then down, but no one can argue conclusively policing had no impact. I spend most of my time arguing against those who insist more police spending means less crime, or that a reduction in police spending means more crime. I think those who are honest are more agnostic on this. I don't think many will argue at this point that incarceration makes us safer. There is simply too much data against that, but that's different than crime vs. policing.

Another interesting study is the correlation between building prisons and crime. In 1960 we built 12 prisons. By 1960, there were 25,853 inmates in 36 institutions.
https://www.insideprison.com/state_federal_prisons_by_year.asp?year=1960
https://www.bop.gov/about/history/timeline.jsp

Here are the state and federal prison rates per 100,000 since the 1960:
119 in 1960
97 in 1970
220 in 1980
756 in 2008
710 in 2012.

For some of this we can point to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, the crime bill of 1994 and harsher sentencing and mandatory minimums across the board, but whatever the cause we now have an estimated 1,435,500 in prison along with an exponential growth in policing during that time with almost 1,000,000 law enforcement officials across all departments.
https://www.vera.org/publications/people-in-prison-in-2019

My own opinion that can't be proven is that we had a very real crime problem in the early 1990's that resulted in an increase in harsher sentencing and more policing. Once that momentum started rolling it continued after crimes rate really started to fall 2 decades ago. I can't measure how much of this violent crime was a result of drug criminalization vs. thinks like the age of the population and there is no way to measure what the crime rate would have been if we had invested that money in more social programs and less police and prisons. I will admit that on a purely visceral level the idea of locking someone in our current dysfunctional and toxic prison system makes me physically nauseous and seems like a huge policy failure since our society cuts off every exit strategy to recovering once they get out.

It does raise interesting questions about our priorities as a society and if we want to continue in the direct we have over the past 6 decades.

32

@29 and that’s sad and yet it probably won’t change regardless of whether we defund the police or not. There will always be predators in our midst. Let’s just hope you don’t inadvertently make the list grow.

34

@23: If you want anyone to take you seriously, you might want to stop pretending to god-like omniscience.

"Even if a police officer had been there, the social worker would be just as dead."

Really? And what magical power allowed you to know this for sure? You don't just get to state anything you like as "fact" and then expect adults to take you seriously, let alone have us use anything you claim as a basis for public policy.

This country has serious problems with race, class, prosecution, incarceration, laws, and police. Arbitrarily declaring a 50% (or whatever) de-fund of the police will touch only the latter. It's a social experiment on a grand scale, with nothing in the way of evidentiary support for success except for magical statements like the one quoted.

Meanwhile, in reality, we are de-criminalizing drug use, adding treatment options for non-violent offenders, and making it easier to prosecute police officers. We should be reducing our reliance upon the police, but there is no confidence our City Council will do anything except continue to create expensive fiascos like our homeless-industrial complex. De-funding police, if it happens, will happen as a result of moving some police work to social workers, drug treatment counselors, and the like. It won't be a cause of any of that.

And, finally, for those of us who remember this is actually a democracy, not an oligopoly of self-appointed activists, we here in District 1 voted for adequate funding for the police. Our CM spun around and pandered to the defund crowd, with the only tangible result being the departure of our city's first female BIPOC police chief. What in that result, exactly, is supposed to convince us the defund policy, at least as pursued by our current City Council, makes any sense at all?

35

@34: Wow, the City Council that pushed through this 20% SPD cut must be terrified about their political future.

I means, once they lose the support of some anonymous rando in The Stranger comment section named Tensor.........

38

@34: Tensor feels he's qualified to speak for the entire BLM movement by selecting only those few statements he agrees with and then speaking over them on the vast majority of issues where they would be disgusting by everything he represents.

I can't speak for the entire black movement as he does since I lack his personal experience, (and by that I mean streaming 'Straight Outta Compton" on Netflix from his suburban home) but I suspect many black people don't approve of an incompetent police chief who happens to be black and fails to reign in a police force that spent the Summer rioting against mostly peaceful protestors.

39

@36 your optimism that Nikita Oliver and company will be an improvement over the current SPD is comical. The SPD no doubt needs work but given a choice between them and the ability of the council and activists to build something that won’t be an unmitigated disaster I’ll take SPD and their imperfections every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

40

I can't wait to see what this $2mil community policing initiative looks like. Bunch of clowns in hard hats and Upright Citizen Brigade badges getting knocked the fuck out by hardcore criminals LOL. What in the actual fuck.

41

@35: If you like, you can explicitly argue that un-named activists, not actual voters in real elections, should set policy. If you did so, you would make the mentality of the "defund" movement very clear.

@36: "The entire point is to tie police funding to performance, behavior and new training standards."

No, the entire point of the "defund" movement is to defund the police by an arbitrary amount, then whisky monkey banana telephone, no more bad behavior by police ever. That's really all there is to it. You're welcome.

@37, @38: If you want to argue with BLM of Seattle & King County, then here is their complete statement on our Council's harassing of Chief Best into quitting. Have at them!

"Today’s news of the retirement of Chief Carmen Best is a loss.

"It does nothing to further our fight for authentic police accountability and the safety of Black lives, that the first Black woman to hold the position of Chief of Police of the Seattle Police Department has been forced out of her job by the Seattle City Council.
"Racism is racism.
"We demand the Seattle City Council stop prioritizing performative action that solely suggests the appearance of change. We demand transparency and accountability for the series of actions and inactions that led to Chief Best’s resignation. And we demand a successor that serves Black Lives."

Recall this is the ONLY result so far of our Council's "defund" activity. If you believe further defund activity will produce better results, please feel free to tell us why. (Please remember that "whisky monkey banana telephone" is already taken.)


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