Good luck, kids.

So these activists don't care whether their fellow Seattleites get shot or get robbed.

I find the accusations of clout chasing to be hilarious. Reminds me of Matthew 7:5 “ You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

@2
I'm not ready to go GOP,
but where do I buy a gun?

Good to see these activists holding the city council and mayor accountable for a hiring freeze and more police budget cuts.

They are making Seattle safer for everyone. This is was democracy looks like.

@6, Democracy, as I understand it, would look something like people saying what they stand for and people voting for them or not based on that. What happened here is that several council members said one thing to get elected and, at the behest of protesters, are doing the opposite. Maybe the voters have changed their mind, and lying politicians aren't exactly rare, but my take is that if you're going to try something radical like defunding the police by a significant amount or decriminalizing misdemeanors, the voters should get an informed say on the matter if you want to call it a democracy.

@8, no, they're not. "These folks" are activists, they have a point of view and they can push it any legal way they want. This isn't a problem, it's actually a good thing when people care enough to engage in the political process for what they believe in. Also, they don't represent black people or anyone other than the membership of their organizations. I don't think people will come away from this disliking black people unless that was how they felt going in.

The council are the ones who have a responsibility to the people who elected them. If they can't handle some pressure from activists, or developers or corporations, they really need to reconsider their chosen line of work. If they really think that defunding the police is a good idea, they should have been clear about this when they were running for office. It really doesn't help that on the few times they actually respond to their constituents, they seem to take a "let them eat cake" approach.

@2:

How often do the poh-poh actively prevent a shooting or robbery?

'One failure during the budget process was Councilmember Lisa Herbold's proposed legislation to amend Seattle's municipal code around misdemeanors. The legislation was born out of the defund movement, Cházaro explained, to make it "harder for prosecutors to put people in jail for behavior related to living in poverty, related to using drugs, or related to struggling with mental health.'

The Stranger missed an opportunity to explain to Cházaro how Seattle's voters have been decriminalizing drugs for many, many years before the word "defund" was ever even used:

"Seattle voters made marijuana possession arrests the lowest enforcement priority in 2003 by passing Initiative 75."

(https://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/02/24/police-keep-up-pot-arrestsmostly-of-black-people)

We also voted heavily for I-502 in 2012, which de-criminalized recreational cannabis use statewide.

Seattle's city government has since de-facto de-criminalized drug use, possession, sale, and thefts in support of same for years -- if the person is Homeless(TM), so CM Herbold's legislation would affect only housed poor persons.

@7: "Democracy, as I understand it, would look something like people saying what they stand for and people voting for them or not based on that."

That is one part of democracy. Another is a politician changing policy to match the changing will of the voters when those people are confronted with new facts that change their mind.

I suspect we will find that public sentiment has shifted significantly on the topic of police funding primarily due to the police mishandling of the protests against police violence.

Most citizens have very little contact with the police and get most of their information from Hollywood procedural TV and a media that largely serves in stenographic servitude to whatever propaganda the police and prosecutor PR office feed them.

This Summer the voters of Seattle got a rare real glimpse at the pure brutality of American policing. For the police this was business as usual and they thought nothing of it, but they failed to realize that the majority of American's have been shielded from what real policing in Seattle looks like. As a result, police approval not just in Seattle, but in the entire US is as a multi generational low

The members of the city council stay in office based on their ability to read this shifting opinion. If they read it correctly as I believe they have, they will be rewarded for this in the next election. If they guessed wrong, they will be out of work. I think that's a better approximation of democracy in action than pretending the will of the people has not shifted when it seems clear to them it has.

Besides, there's something disingenuous about those to support the carceral state acting like this was some bolt from the blue. The council has been talking about this for 6 months now and the majority has made it clear they support some cuts. All but one felt that a 50% was to much at this point, but a clear majority needed to pass the budget shifted on this topic some time ago.

I suspect their will be more cuts in the future after the council wins re-election based on this decision, but only time will tell.

Isn't it part of the police officer's job description to be a fact finder when crimes have been committed, in addition to seeking out and securing evidence in cooperation with a detective? Has there been any thought/discussion as to the impact on being able to carry out these functions if half of the resources are cut from the department? Wouldn't this slow down the court system as well - if a case can't get the attention it deserves from the 'feet on the ground' (police/detective) wouldn't that impact/slow down the process of convicting OR absolving people that are suspects?

Or are social workers going to do this as well, which would require training on chain-of-custody for evidence, interrogation, etc?

@12: A issue central to carceral reform raised in many protests around the country that I wish I had seem more of in Seattle is how badly the prosecutorial profession at the city, county, and federal level has failed us as it currently exists in the US.

Even more than the police, prosecutors operate in an bullet proof black box of invulnerability and invisibility with little to no oversight or accountability. Where police have qualified immunity, prosecutors have absolute immunity. Where police have friends within the department investigating their crimes, prosecutors have no one to conduct even performative oversight of what they do and how they do it.

Rather than charging and sentencing based on a legally regulated system involving checks and balances and objective rules, charging and sentencing here is the US is done as a back room private deal where charging (and due to mandatory minimums, sentencing) is handled entirely at the prosecutor's discretion out of public view with few if any guiding principles or oversight beyond their personal judgement and how they are feeling that day. Prosecutors tell us this is all OK because "we can just trust them" to do the right thing with no oversight or accountability, but time and again we catch prosecutors using this trust to settle personal scores with defendants they don't like for personal or political reasons. Where prosecutors publicly promise a fair equitable justice system, what we find instead is a systemic pattern of some laws enforced against some people some of the time with justice subordinated to their brutal "need to win at all costs" just out of site of the media. It's a position ripe for reform and accountability and the Seattle city council seems willing to take that on the work others have not.

The reason council members have stepped in to place constraints on the legal decisions of how prosecutors charge is because the prosecutors office at both the city and county level has failed miserably at doing this in an equitable fashion. You talk about the end of the war on drugs, but you might as well be celebrating the end of the war on alcohol prohibition. Drugs are only one small part of a legal code used to exploit the poor and fill our jails and prisons with those living in poverty and within the marginalized groups in society. If you arrest someone addicted to drugs on a different change such as sex work and send them to jail, or even worse, conversion therapy in the form of the LEAD program, it frankly gives them little comfort if you tell them on the way to jail "sure we sent you to jail, but hey, we didn't send you on a drug charge! We are reformers who lock people up for only the 'Wokest' reasons."

The council understands that we need to reduce or jail and prison population and reform the system. Like the police, prosecutors have dragged their feet on this privately while giving reform performative public support.

@13, the council made some pretty big pledges and seems to have spent the time since then backtracking. Public opinion certainly did go against the police earlier this summer, but things seemed to have changed, you can find polls from October that show the majority of people wanting to reform rather than defund the police. The council seems to have reacted, they were talking about a 50% reduction, what we got was really a 3% reduction along with moving some services to different departments. I would bet that if the murder rate continues to be as high as it has been, the city will spend next year trying to hire more cops.

https://crosscut.com/news/2020/10/poll-king-county-voters-want-change-not-defund-police

@15:

"Has there been any thought/discussion as to the impact on being able to carry out these functions if half of the resources are cut from the department?"

Absolutely none whatsoever. The 50% defund effort is a slogan, utterly devoid of any forethought. There is no evidence de-funding will change the targeted behaviors (abuses committed by police), and plenty to suggest it will negatively affect justice, as you mention. This is why any critique of it tends to bring lurid accusations of the critic secretly loving police violence, instead of any fact-based dialog.

(Then again, it would seem impossible to make prosecution of property crimes less effective in Seattle than it already is.)

@16:

"...charging (and due to mandatory minimums, sentencing) is handled entirely at the prosecutor's discretion..."

In Washington state, sentencing is done by judges. Mandatory minimum sentences reduce the judge's discretion, but the mandatory minimums come from the legislature. Prosecutors may request sentencing, but the final decision belongs to the judge.

OMG given that only 1-2% of 9-1-1 calls need an armed police officer, I'm kind of thinking we probably wouldn't notice if our resources were rebalanced to a 50/50 (or my suggested 35/65) mix.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

'These folks' give "Activists" a bad name.
How is the solution workable? Nice slogan. Did it work?
How do we realize it w/ our City Council following the public relations breeze, agreeing w/ every free photo op?
There is often a highly agreeable simple solution to major complicated decades long issues that folk will believe in and cling to when it obviously WILL NOT WORK as planned.
Please, don't think bias is ever going away. We need education in 2nd grade through High School. We need State, County and Municipal voting rights at age 16 (motor-voter), with national representation at age of majority.

@11: By working with the community, following up on investigations, and doing their job. The profession is as much as about proaction for crime prevention as it is about responding to crime.

But you already know that.

@13:

"Another is a politician changing policy to match the changing will of the voters when those people are confronted with new facts that change their mind.

"I suspect we will find that public sentiment has shifted significantly on the topic of police funding primarily due to the police mishandling of the protests against police violence."

Try reading the headline to this post again: "Activists Plan to Keep Pushing for an SPD Hiring Freeze"

Here, I'll help:"activists," not "voters." See the difference?

That's why you didn't cite any evidence of any kind whotsoever to support your claim about "the changing will of the voters" being the driver of our Council's "defund" nonsense.

(Here's another helpful hint: is Nikkita Oliver an elected official, or an activist? See the difference?)

@24: You continually confuse my to response with a different topic while not addressing the main topic at all. You leave out comments I made where clearly said I am giving an opinion and tell me I can't prove that. Yes, that is why I said it was an opinion.
It's called arguing in bad faith and it's pretty much all you do here. I assume you know it and realize you are adding nothing but confusion. If you can't provide a real response to my post, perhaps it would be more honest to just admit I'm right and you did give enough thought to your poorly reasoned position.

I will correct you on one statement you made that is simply a flat out lie:
@16:

"In Washington state, sentencing is done by judges. Mandatory minimum sentences reduce the judge's discretion, but the mandatory minimums come from the legislature. Prosecutors may request sentencing, but the final decision belongs to the judge."

I can literally hear the entire Defense Bar laughing at your take on how the system works.

If you spent a single day in a courtroom (as I suspect you have) you know that your description is complete nonsense. You're hiding behind how it works on paper to distract from how it works in a reality because you know how bad that makes it look for prosecutors.

Judges give the prosecutor almost complete discretion over sentencing and rarely if ever challenge what a prosecutor decides for what the changes will be, the number of charges and how long the sentence will be, unless it's the rare event where the judge decides to enhance the time served, but they never reduce it, challenge the charges or the number charged. Mandatory minimums give almost complete control of sentencing and deliver a non jury verdict through plea deals to the prosecutor. As for your canard about the legislature creating mandatory minimums, it is not the legislature that then misuses those mandatory minimums to stack charges to ensure a plea deal whether the defendant is innocent or not. I can guarantee you if the the public understood how prosecutors use mandatory minimums to manipulate the system they would demand it be shut down tomorrow.

I think the fact that prosecutors are never willing to admit how corrupt the system is, or their role in that corruption to the public and pretend that it's all "someone else doing this" proves they know how problematic their behaviour is so hide it from the public. We will need to strip that power from them and replace it with accountability and some level of oversight if we are ever going to end mass incarceration and introduce some minimum level of justice back into the system.

@23: @11 asked you a serious question and you responding with a mindless platitude, but you know that. The answer is the police almost never stop an active shooter. In fact, they all to often don't apprehend a shooter after the fact since not where they focus their time and resources. Social control through enforcing petty crimes is their bailiwick.

@19: Since the money for those programs will come from the police budget you will need to cut the police budget to fund it. Don't worry, for all the police whining we are talking about an amount equal to what be pay to provide them with breath mints in a monthly basis. That's why the keep talking about the 50% that didn't happen.

@17: "I would bet that if the murder rate continues to be as high as it has been, the city will spend next year trying to hire more cops."
Setting aside that we do not have enough data to support a claim that murder has increased, or the broader claim that police reduce murder at all, you are claiming that after 50 years of police budget increases, simply discussing a small reduction that has not even taken place is leading to an explosion in murder. Sure. go with that.

@8: "These folks don’t understand that their giving black people a bad name."

I appreciate your honestly and suspect many who are in law enforcement and well as many of their supporters share your view.

With policing you have a group of people of questionable character following the orders of leaders with a questionable moral system. Members only feel loyal to the police command structure and are isolated from any meaningful civilian oversight.

The next logical step is what you implied here; to see anyone who questions their tactics as untermensch. If they are of a different color that just confirms your initial feeling, doesn't it? I mean criminals, who purely by coincidence just happen to be overwhelmingly people of color aren't really humans, of they would not have challenged the police, right?

I appreciate your openness on this topic. Perhaps if we can get more members of law enforcement to express their similar views about minorities we can finally have a real conversation the public will understand.

@25: "You leave out comments I made where clearly said I am giving an opinion and tell me I can't prove that. Yes, that is why I said it was an opinion."

You stated, as fact, "Another is a politician changing policy to match the changing will of the voters when those people are confronted with new facts that change their mind."

No, the "defund" policy of our Council has no basis in actual votes cast by real voters in elections. CM Herbold was elected, in part, on a promise to fund SPD and she promptly broke that promise outright by supporting the "defund" policy. Go ahead, find evidence voters in District 1 support defunding.

"It's called arguing in bad faith and it's pretty much all you do here."

Ha, ha, ha. Provide one piece of evidence -- sourced from some place other than your rectum -- that defunding will alter police behaviors in the manner you claim to want.

Your utter contempt for Seattle's voters ("Most citizens ... get most of their information from Hollywood procedural TV and a media that largely serves in stenographic servitude to whatever propaganda ...") either blinds you to what we actually know, or complements your own ignorance. Hence, howlers such as,

"This Summer the voters of Seattle got a rare real glimpse at the pure brutality of American policing."

I was in the WTO protest march on N30 (30 Nov. 1999) and escaped, purely by luck, from getting mauled by the SPD. Ever since then, protests downtown, in Belltown, and in Pike-Pine routinely receive a violent response from SPD. By contrast, multiple BLM protests in West Seattle, including one which shut down California Avenue for most of its length, received calm police protection. Same SPD, same protest subject, totally different response. Yet another indication, if one could possibly be necessary, that a one-size-all "defund SPD" strategy won't work.

@25, "Setting aside that we do not have enough data to support a claim that murder has increased" We have had 41 murders in Seattle through October of this year, there were 28 in all of last year. As 41 is greater than 28, we have enough data say that murders in Seattle have increased. I never claimed this was some long term trend, just what would happen if we continue to see a higher murder rate.

"you are claiming that after 50 years of police budget increases, simply discussing a small reduction that has not even taken place is leading to an explosion in murder. Sure. go with that."

I never made such a claim. I said that if the murder rate continues to be as high as it has been this year that the city is going to hire more cops. I didn't say it would work or not, just that more cops would be hired. The context of my post was about the city council backtracking on their promises to defund the police, not the causes of the increase of murders we've seen this year or what the solutions would be. Just hiring more cops probably won't reduce the murder rate, but it will have killed off any claim of defunding the police.

@25: "I will correct you on one statement you made that is simply a flat out lie:"

Ah, so, by the definition of "lie," you will quote a statement I made, and show that it is false, and that I knew (or had good reason to know) it was false when I made it. Let's see how good a job you did at the task you set for yourself:

"In Washington state, sentencing is done by judges. Mandatory minimum sentences reduce the judge's discretion, but the mandatory minimums come from the legislature. Prosecutors may request sentencing, but the final decision belongs to the judge."

Sadly, you completely failed. Everything you quoted is, in fact, true, and I could not have told a "lie" by stating the truth. Why did you wrongly believe you had proven I'd lied?

"I can literally hear the entire Defense Bar laughing..."

While the many voices in your head may indeed be deeply persuasive to you, they do not function as evidence for anyone else. You might want to learn that before continuing to cite the voices in your head as evidence someone else has lied.

@29: You have quoted not me, but quoted yourself that I included in quotes in my response to you. as usual, you then left out my response and claimed your words are my words as proof you are being honest.

Those who care to can go back and read what I posted, but there is a greater point here.

Earlier you asked me to "go back" to provide an example of how you continually argue in bad faith. There was no need to go back because you continually do so and I knew you would provide an example simply through the act of typing. And here we are.

I point out how prosecutors and police gaslight the public through the media and Hollywood where most of us gain our information. You have no adequate response to that, so claim I am showing contempt for the voter. Perhaps it's the prosecutors and police who continually lie to the voters about their professions and how the criminal system works that are showing real contempt for the voter.

You say that the police simply suffer from a few bad apples. When I provide so many examples of bad apples and those who support the bad apples that it's clear the problem is greater than that, you claim that as proof I hate cops, which I don't. You do that because the alternative is admitting the problem with policing in America is systemic and not about the individuals so the solution is to limit police power, limit police spending and increase accountability. Those are three outcomes you can never accept no matter how justified. For you, reform can only mean more money and less accountability and more of the performative justice the system is based on.

Why do you feel you must lie constantly to maintain voter support? Because the state is violence and violence depends on lies for its existence. One you choose violence, you necessarily choose lies and you understand that if the public sees past those lies to the unjust and corrupt system we have in place the game will be up. You're only path available is to lie, obfuscate, rationalize, victim blame and yes, argue in bad faith.

What you can never do is allow for an honest evaluation of the failed criminal system, or tell the truth. Without the lies, you have nothing.

"I point out how prosecutors and police gaslight the public through the media and Hollywood where most of us gain our information."

Proof of which is what, exactly? You haven't provided any evidence to support your claim.

"You have no adequate response to that,"

See my wholly adequate response, just above.

"...claim I am showing contempt for the voter."

Yes. Your claim voters believe what we are fed by "the media and Hollywood" insults voters who obtain their information by other means, such as by protesting and observing the results. I gave an example of a voter who did just that, but you have so far ignored it.

"Perhaps it's the prosecutors and police who continually lie to the voters about their professions and how the criminal system works that are showing real contempt for the voter."

Yes, if they behave in the manner you describe, I would agree they "are showing real contempt for the voter." So far, the only evidence you have offered for such behavior comes from the voices in your head.

"You say that the police simply suffer from a few bad apples."

Please provide a quote of my saying that, and a url to my quote. I honestly do not recall saying anything of the kind.

"When I provide so many examples of bad apples..."

Making the same claim over and over (and over...) is not actually providing evidence for it.

"...you claim that as proof I hate cops,"

Please provide a quote of my saying that, and a url to my quote. I honestly do not recall saying anything of the kind.

"...the problem with policing in America is systemic and not about the individuals so the solution is to limit police power, limit police spending and increase accountability."

I agree with all of that. Where we disagree is in your claim that defunding police by some arbitrary amount will contribute to solving any of those systemic problems. You have yet to provide any evidence it will.

"For you, reform can only mean more money and less accountability and more of the performative justice the system is based on."

Again, quote(s) and url(s). Here's an example of what I have actually written:

"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." (https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/11/23/52045693/seattle-city-council-just-cut-spds-budget-by-20/comments/34) If you want to read that as my ringing endorsement for cops, cops, and more cops, you can do that, but please don't be surprised if your basic reading comprehension skills get called into question as a result.

"Why do you feel you must lie constantly to maintain voter support?"

Um, I don't. Why don't you cite public opinion surveys of actual voters?

"Because the state is violence..."

A functioning state, by definition, has a legal monopoly on the use of force within its borders. Your claim goes far beyond that, and calls into question whether you would tolerate any funding for the police at all. Once you start sounding like you don't tolerate the very concept of police, you're going to lose public support by an even larger margin than you already have. (From the link @17: "...voters support funding social services, but aren't ready to tear down law enforcement just yet.")

@32 -- you keep talking about people lying when you are being equally misleading. Over and over again you talk about the increase in total law enforcement budgets nationwide since the 60s as if it is somehow evidence of unnecessary spending. It's not. It's largely based on two factors:

Society has changed since the 60s, and our view of what should be handled by the criminal justice system has changed with it. Among other things, we have decided that crimes against women and children are things worth investigating and prosecuting. This is a good thing. Resources were essentially non-existant for these types of crimes in the criminal justice system during the time you point to as the model we should go back to. If you think that crimes against women and children are things that shouldn't be handled by law enforcement, you should just come out and say so. Because that is a fringe position, not one supported by anywhere close to a majority of the public.
Growth in areas that were previously largely rural has dramatically increased budgets for all public agencies, to include law enforcement. Take Bellevue as one example. In 1960, less than 15,000 people lived there. Now its population is more than 120,000. That population growth has also grown the Bellevue Police Department, because that's what happens when cities get bigger and when citizens want more city services. Multiply this by the many thousands of municipalities across the country that have experienced similar growth and you see where the increased budgets are going.

Police are in no way close to perfect. Problematic departments and officers should be dealt with. But that takes hard, constant, and ongoing work. The defund movement is a slogan masquerading as legitimate policy. It pretends hard work is easy. It's the Underpants Gnomes in action.

People should just say what they mean and mean what they say. If you believe that we should not have police at all, and should not investigate and prosecute crimes at all, you should just say that. Because that's where your stated positions lead us. And that's not a position shared by anywhere close to a majority of the public.