City departments need not be required to create records concerning anecdotes.

Matt, strange that you don't consider murder a crime:

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle-police-reports-49-murders-setting-pace-for-record-homicides/281-c32aa4ae-ef9c-485f-a9d8-1113b491fc9d

Matt, you earn every dollar.

well, since they're OUR Airwaves
why don't let's have them issue
Corrections equal to 20% of
the Hysterics they'd Broad-
cast previously.

or, they can just shut off
for a few hours daily
if republican Utopia
is Banana Republic
let's stick with that
Theme, for clarity.

So basically the SPD engaged in the kind of "I don't know, but I've heard.." rumor mongering common with sleazy politicians. "There are unsubstantiated allegations that my opponent has been having sex with farm animals.". Yeah, by whom? Who are these people making these statements? Your own staff?

The fact that there was not a single person who bothered to step forward means that someone (or more than one person in the department wanted to spread a rumor to make the occupiers look worse, and drive a wedge between them and other parts of the community. This is bullshit, and it is disgusting. It has been almost ten years since federal investigators found "a pattern or practice of constitutional violations regarding the use of force that result from structural problems, as well as serious concerns about biased policing", yet very little has been done to address these systemic problems. You can't police a community unless you have the respect of the community. You can't do that if you have an "us" versus "them" attitude towards the community. The SPD still has that, after all these years, and this is but the latest example.

@2 Keeping records concerning anecdotes is precisely what the city department in question is required to do when you file a police report.

Your anecdote might not even describe anything that qualifies as a crime, and its veracity may or may not be verified at some point in the future, but the police are absolutely required to make and keep a record of it anyway, for reasons that ought to be perfectly obvious.

@5 If police investigations didn't start with hearsay, there wouldn't be any police investigations. The problem here isn't that the police heard a story and decided to look into it, the problem, as you correctly say, is that they didn't drop it after the first hour or two of phone calls to check things out.

6 Like using informants that are under duress (threat) to go back to prison? Or paid to lie?

I'm not sure why this is a story. A simple Google search shows that the SPD walked back the claims of extortion back in early June and stated no one had filed a police report. The Stranger must really be struggling for something newsworthy in 2021. In the last two days we have a propaganda piece for Socialist Alternative, a butt hurt piece by Rich over the Bellevue PD putting up a banner and now a story about an incident that was resolved over 7 months ago. Is that really the only newsworthy things happening right now?

@9 As the story plainly tells you, the public records request took seven months to come back, thus the timing of the story.

The reason the PRR is worth reporting is that right-wing extremists are still circulating the CHOP extortion story. The non-result tells us that there were never any police reports of crimes, which is new evidence that the story is a fabrication, and should be treated as such by media reporting on CHOP in the future.

Well I can tell you one thing. I can't remember so many young black men being shot or murdered on Capitol Hill in the last 30 years.

SPD should recognize real extortion. I'm surprised they were so easily thrown off by the scent of anecdote, given their experience.

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/12/18/54252160/a-very-brief-history-of-the-seattle-police-departments-greatest-hits

Love this piece, Matt. More like that, please.

@6:

The reasons may be perfectly obvious to us rational and sane people, but to people like Raindrip and his ilk nothing is obvious unless it can be explained to them in terms simple enough for a three year old to understand; and even then you'll have to repeat it about seventy-bazillion times before it begins to sink in.

@10 What did Matt expect to find when the SPD confirmed back on June 10th that the allegations were not true? From the Seattle Times:

"The Seattle Police Department walked back its claim, widely repeated in the news media, that denizens of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone are extorting businesses.

"That has not happened affirmatively," Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best in a news conference Thursday afternoon, adding that the police department had based earlier claims on anecdotal reports, including in the news and on social media. "We haven't had any formal reports of this occurring."

So basically Matt submitted a records request to confirm what the SPD said back in June and now it's some sort of aha moment? Seems pretty lame but whatever gets the clicks I guess.

Any police reports of violent assaults or murders? Because both of those happened there.

(Then again, there's little reason to file a police report if every piece of evidence -- other than the anecdotal ones, of course -- was removed, destroyed, or otherwise contaminated.)

The question The Stranger won't ask is, if the police were hearing rumors of illegal activity taking place DOWN THE STREET FROM THEIR EAST PRECINCT HOUSE, then why were they not immediately restoring police presence to that precinct house?

@6: Nobody filed a police report to include the anecdotes.

@18:

Great, now you're a self-proclaimed expert on police procedure - is there ANY subject you don't think you know more about than anyone else?

REPORT THE NAMES OF THE CHOP SECURITY WHO SHOT THOSE TWO MINORS! This is madness that nobody talks about this. I guess everyone has their own Thin Blue Line.

Translation: like so many things the far-right media pretending to be local TV stations repeats from the SPD, another LIE.

This is why extremist white terrorists tried to take over Washington State Governor's Residence and will try to assault, with weapons, the State Legislature this weekend.

This is why extremist white terrorists tried to take over Congress and why you must report any you know of to the FBI (use their FBI Washington Field Office or the direct link to submit, but also store it in the Internet Wayback Machine so it can be used as evidence).

Democracy is literally under assault by the far right and their fellow travelers in Russia and China.

@21: The initial claim from SPD stated flatly it was based on anecdotal evidence. The SPD then publicly retracted that claim when they found no evidence. That's not evidence of lying, but of telling citizens of dangers they may face, then updating it as evidence directs. Having done all that, they fulfilled the Public Disclosure Request when they had time to do so. They'd already publicly answered the Public Disclosure Request in full, so they had no reason to hurry.

There are plenty of actual liars for you to attack out there. Doubtless some do wear badges and carry guns. Enjoy.

Thar's rich, the Stranger calling out others for misrepresenting the facts.