Thomas-Kennedy said at debate moderated by the Seattle Times on Sept. 30. “I don’t want there to be rampant shoplifting either, so what we need to do is repair businesses, and I will.”

How does this discourage rampant shoplifting? Short answer, it doesn't. Basically we are going to ask taxpayers to pay for shoplifting in the form of higher prices and now restitution while the city comes up with a way to solve poverty. Of course that is a lie because poverty is not at the root of most of these crimes. People are not going into Walgreens and QFC to steal sandwiches. The are stealing booze or other things they can sell to feed their addiction. You can agree that putting these people in jail is not a viable solution to this problem but at least if you arrest them and get them into the system you can assess their needs while also providing some deterrent to continuing the behavior. Let's not pretend any of these people are serving hard time either. The guy who killed the dog down by the courthouse received 8 months and will probably be out on good behavior soon. Someone arrested shoplifting is prob serving a few days to a couple weeks.

Beyond that, as pointed out by Councilmember Lewis this has nothing to do with the city attorney's office. The council can do whatever they want and the city attorney has zero say over restitution. NKT can promise she will defund her office to fund restitution but at the end of the day only the SCC has the power to actually do that. This is just more noise to deflect from the fact that an NKT led city attorney's office will only further enable those that choose to victimize innocent people in order to feed their addictions.

@1:

What a quaint notion - to naively believe retailers don't already recoup the loss of merchandise from shoplifting by raising the prices of goods the rest of us pay for. Strange, given you obviously have such intimate, detailed knowledge of what shoplifters do or don't steal - is this from personal experience or do you just hang around local retail establishments taking notes on what people walk out with?

As for retribution, perhaps you and Davidson should consider becoming musical theatre performers - you'd both make excellent inspector Javerts...

“We’re talking about basic survival needs. Stealing a sandwich, sleeping under an awning – there’s nothing about jail that solves those problems,”

Three hots and a cot.

@2 Comte you're being naive if you really think people are stealing bread to feed themselves and this is all about income inequality. I know from reading your other comments you are not naive so my only conclusion is that you, like The Stranger, are content to gaslight people with this obvious lie in order to get NKT elected.

Of course you don't address the real issue here. How is letting people steal whatever they want and letting the taxpayers/retailers deal with the costs any type of solution? There is no way the city can/will reimburse the costs of all the thefts (the amount of bike thefts alone would wipe out the fund). The city atty is one part of the solution and that is to provide a deterrent not coddle these people. I'm all for restorative solutions and the court has the full jurisdiction to utilize those however if these people never make it to court because our city atty is unilaterally deciding she is the court then what is going to change?

Would NTK punish catalytic converter thieves?

This isn't the best idea, and the $100,000 thrown around isn't going to do much. Here's the problem, let's look at the hungry folks who mistake catalytic converters for, maybe, burritos. They cut it from the car with the sawzall they happen to have and discover it's not really edible, so they sell it online for $75 or so to feed his, um hunger. Well, this costs about $2,000 for the victim to have fixed, and this exact scenario plays out six times per day in Seattle on average. At this rate, the $100,000 will last just over eight days, and this is just for this one type of crime. Same with the guy who breaks thousands of dollars of windows to steal hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise that gets sold for a fraction of what it's worth.

Instead, we could use this money to provide free meals for the homeless. After all, listening to our city attorneys, if only there was a place, somewhere in Seattle, that a homeless person could get something to eat, we'd do away with all of this crime. Okay, probably not, but when someone commits a crime, the amount of money the criminal gets is tiny compared with the damage they do. This makes some kind of prevention much cheaper and any kind of restitution by a huge factor and that is where the money should be spent.

@7 - HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Of course she wont prosecute the poor fellow. Nothing more than a survival crime. If you are hungry, a catalytic converter is exactly what you need.

Or perhaps if we re-define "hungry" to mean "dopesick," this would make more sense.

“When we have people who want to take advantage of situations and do bad acts and you want to divorce accountability and you want to have taxpayers then pay for the wrong that was done, it’s concerning to me because we’re separating out a part of human nature that really should not be,” Davison said. "

It would be easy to look at a statement like this and believe Davison is simply a moron, but I actually think it's more her complete lack of experience in the criminal system that leads her to believe "you want to have taxpayers then pay for the wrong" by using a separate victim fund without realizing tax payers are on the hook for paying even more, a lot more, if we require incarnation. Someone should probably teach her it costs a LOT more to run an incarceration first policy towards low level crimes.

As always, NTK sounds like the reasonable one. Despite the lies spread by her opponent, NTK believes that punishment has a role in interpersonal crimes, but the victim should have some voice in the process too. Many people don't define being made whole entirely in terms of incarceration and revenge based retribution the way Davison does. NTK has worked as a public defender working with victims and criminals in a system where they are often two sides to the same coin. People who have experienced the system as a criminal don't have much faith in it to accomplish much later when they are a victim. Davison has no experience with either group so offers a cartoon version of how the criminal system works with Superman on one side and Lex Luther on the other.

I get it. I was once 12 years old and we all remember how the world looked at that time. It's just not the mentality of the person that you want to place in charge of the Seattle DA office.

I just had to post this for the lurkers on this board as an example of how bullshit the notion these are poor starving people really is. Here is a guy stealing star wars legos repeatedly and fencing them. I’m sure so he can afford fresh fruit at the Whole Foods. What a joke

https://mynorthwest.com/3192698/seattle-store-owner-arrested-star-wars-legos/

So, a City Attorney NTK wouldn't prosecute petty theft in Seattle, but she would happily take some of the tax money she would not use to prosecute them, and use it to create a wholly-inadequate compensation fund for the victims of petty theft. (Would she then advocate raising their taxes, to get more money into the fund? It would seem to follow her same logic.)

@12: "Which was assist the victim was funds to help find a new place to live and not charge the offender so as to not make the victim go trough the ordeal of testifying on a trial. This in its self seems at least sane."

Until you recall that Amazon does the very same thing, by supporting Mary's Place, and that Amazon is #1 atop the Stranger's great big very long list of persecutable hate-objects. So you can see why NTK would not want so to incur the Stranger's wrath.

And, it's Back to the Future, with Orwellian inversions of the meanings of words: "...some form of retribution."

No, the entire point of an impersonal, impartial justice system is to prevent revenge-style justice, from victims of crimes directed at the criminals who had preyed upon them. Refusing to prosecute crimes thus encourages "...some form of retribution."

@14: "As always, NTK sounds like the reasonable one."

Especially for values of "always" which now include, but are not necessarily limited to, apologias for human trafficking -- and even slavery. (https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/10/12/61916444/cops-can-take-your-stuff-and-not-give-it-back-we-must-change-that/comments)

The solution to crime :
Have cops who do their you-know-what job dammit, stopping crime, serving and damn protecting, instead of just eating donuts and shooting unarmed black people to death on their way to eat some more donuts on their way to shoot some more unarmed black people.

In the past year, the ONLY TIME I've seen any cops, was a bunch of them cooping out in a parking lot right there next to a busy arterial street, yakking to each other driver-side-window-to-driver-side-window.
No more patrolling.
No more serving.
No more protecting.
No more even responding to damn 9-1-1 calls unless it's an "active shooter".

If it wasn't for "active shooters" we wouldn't even need a police department.

Defund THIS.

@6: "you're being naive if you really think people are stealing bread to feed themselves and this is all about income inequality."

You're only displaying your ignorance with a statement like that.

Here's one of many examples of a homeless person stealing a coat from the Good Will in Seattle in the middle of Winter and and facing harsh incarceration for doing so:

"A homeless man steals clothes from a Seattle Goodwill, goes to jail. His story isn’t unusual"

https://www.kuow.org/stories/a-homeless-man-steals-clothes-from-a-seattle-goodwill-goes-to-jail-his-story-isn-t-unusual

No question, this monster deserve hard time and Davison is just the person to give it to him. Imagine, a world where the Goodwill is given stuff for free to help the homeless and the homeless are not incarcerated for taking a coat in Winter. You should definitely vote for Davison. Her entire knowledge of the criminal system is based on watching reruns of COPS, so she will have no problem prosecuting a case like this once she learns the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony and what the actual job is she is running for.

Your argument is the same tired "well you can't make it rain? Then who are you to tell me I can't throw virgins in a volcano to stop crime from happening!"

The consistent trouble with people like you and Davison is you imagine you are dealing with people who have something to lose, so you can incarcerate them out of the behavior you don't want.

News flash, they have nothing to lose thanks to a 40 year plan to grind people into poverty and incarcerate them for profit when they get there. You aren't going to incarcerate people with nothing to lose into doing what you want if they have nothing to lose, which they don't.

Build them up. Give them something to lose. THEN you and Davison and execute your adolescent revenge fantasies.

@18: You're dead right and this ties in to how asset forfeiture has warped our police.

We have real examples of rape, murder and property crime the police in Seattle do nothing about, especially when it involves the poor because their are no suitcases of free cash in it to motivate them. The fact that Seattle has an under 10% resolution rate for reported rape and lets rape kits rot in shelves unless the feds pay them extra to care tells you everything you need to know.

The reason we had a drug war and later a war on sex workers is because police and prosecutors are entirely motivated my asset forfeiture with no interest in stopping violent crime.
In fact, violent crime is used to justify larger budgets in top of the money they steal through asset forfeiture. Did you know we have police officers that have the entire job of getting grant money and increasing asset forfeiture while doing nothing to fight actual violent crime? Its disgusing.

Until we change what asset forfeiture and the federal grant system rewards most, which are low level bullshit victimless crimes, it will always be about free cash for arresting people ingesting plants and having sex. You will never have a police force that goes after the violent crimes you actually pay them in taxes to care about and they talk about endlessly while non expending a single man hour to stop them. A Seattle Patrolman does not pull down over $400 thousand a year because he focused on fighting violent crime. He makes that kind of money feeding off an elaborate hand job operation he tells the Press is all about fighting human trafficking.

@19 you might want to actually read that story before using it as an example. The guy was charged 2 months later and never arrested. Hardly a case of over prosecution. Also in the story is a woman who also stole and was sentenced to 20 hours of community service. That sounds completely reasonable to me. There is a consequence for her action and also a chance to engage her and understand her needs. Under you and NKTs preferred plan we would do nothing, let them keep stealing and attempt to pay back store owners from taxpayer funds. So keep spinning stories of woe and make believe hard time but it’s not true and we all know there are many more of the Lego thieves out there than the goodwill thieves.

@17: "Especially for values of "always" which now include, but are not necessarily limited to, apologias for human trafficking"

But there were no charges of human trafficking, so the cops are lying justify stealing stuff and
rather than challenging them, you are parroting their lies the way you always do. Let me guess, you think George Floyd died of a drug overdose and deserved it because he had a criminal record and may or may not have been a "human trafficker!" AmIright?

No question, if you are worried about the satanic daycare pedophile McMartin cases sweeping the nation from the 1980's and "blood liable" right here in Seatte Seattle, you have a strong argument for stealing the rent from some Mom with 2 kids who will now he out on the street. Vote for Davison, you'll be happy.

Unfortunately, you and your Qanon nut job friends are not especially persuasive outside the backwoods of Alabama where you get your blood liable-Qanon-Human trafficking talking points used to steal stuff from poor people.

@21: You dodged the question entirely. Disappointing, but predictable. You always avoid the questions you can't answer. That's why you and Davison believe that as the country that incarcerates more people than the next 5 countries combined, the solution is to incarcerate harder until poverty is gone!

Thanks to the media embarrassing the Goodwill into doing the right thing and not having a sociopath like Davison in office he was not incarcerated "2 months later," but how much money was wasted paying prosecutors and judges for him to go through the system before the media eventually embarrassed the Goodwill and Prosecutors office into doing the right thing? Don't you think it would have been cheaper and more ethical to give him a fucking coat in the dead of winter for free in the first place, rather than pay the enormously expensive criminal system to waste 2 months on this case, or follow the Davison plan of given him hard time? People like me are asking why we wasted so much money and if we ever got a got? You and Davison are fantisizing about him being incarcerated to make Seattle a better place.

As the article points out if you read it, this person is not alone and when the media is not paying attention the Davison's are thrilled to incarcerate the homeless for steeling coats in Winter because "these need to pay the price for their crimes!"

It's what she believes the Seattle DA should be all about.

I know, consequences. You and Davison believe we can't have homeless people stealing coats the Goodwill was given for free in the dead of winter with impunity. That the media was able to embarrass the Goodwill and prosecutor office into doing the right thing after wasting our tax money for 2 months on a non-case is only more proof be need to incarcerate the poor.

I understand you are delusional, but you are nobody. Davison in running for a position she hardly understands beyond her impulse to criminalize the destitute so you can feel better about yourself. I get it, but Is that really what we want?

@22: As you have added absolutely nothing (except a few, even more feeble, attempts at insult) to address my original points, I can simply quote myself:

"You've complained that prosecutors do not charge police with crimes, and you're supporting a candidate for City Attorney who has stated she will not prosecute most of the crimes which fall under the prosecutorial purview of that office. Now, suddenly you claim that a lack of charges is proof no crime happened. Thank you for validating my previous decision, of not attempting honest dialog with you. You are clearly not capable of honesty, at least not when laws, cops, and prosecutors are the topics of dialog."

(https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/10/12/61916444/cops-can-take-your-stuff-and-not-give-it-back-we-must-change-that/comments/40)

@23 dude you still haven’t read the article. There was a warrant issued but he was never even arrested. You’re just embarrassing yourself now.

@21: When I saw Sydney Brownstone's name on the story, I knew it needed a close and skeptical reading. Sure enough, the top claim in the story was dodgy: "Seattle charges people for stealing from Goodwill more than any other retailer." The first graph shows this is (barely) true: 318 persons were prosecuted for theft from Goodwill in the period studied (Nov. 2017 - Nov. 2018; the story is from 2019). However, 314 persons were prosecuted for theft from Target, 171 persons were prosecuted for theft from Macy's, 110 persons were prosecuted for theft from Home Depot, 104 persons were prosecuted for theft from Nordstrom's / Nordstrom's Rack, and 103 persons were prosecuted for general "Property Theft / destruction."

Contrary to NTK's constant talk of poor persons prosecuted for stealing food, only one of those retailers, Target, actually sells food. Goodwill exists to help the poor, so the thefts committed there dis-proportionally hurt the poor, which perhaps explains why Goodwill takes such an aggressive stance against theft.

@26 Well, no one can accuse you of adding nothing given the stream of gibberish and lies you are spewing out.

By claiming a group of marijuana growers are actually human traffickers without proof simply because you dreamed it up to justify stealing their stuff, you simply add lies faster than anyone can correct them. Thankfully the 1980's Miami Vice illusion about how this works is over for everyone but you. You must know that 80% of Americans oppose asset forfeiture, so invent human trafficking fantasies to distract from the central issue. I would have more respect for you if you stopped covering for lies with child daycare sex panic level 1980's fantasies to cover your tracks. All your telling us is that your a pervert projecting your own bizarre fantasies on a group of pot growers. Get help.

Not only that, you jump from pot growers to human trafficking to NTK supporting human traffickers. The only thing you left out is a claim that it's really all for the children, meaning the blond blue eyed female children of course. Perhaps a meme with a black guys hand over the mouth of a blue eyed, blond white girls mouth will help you sell your disgusting bullshit to a wider audience.

Sure, whenever the police claim human slavery without a charge to prove they are not lying they should be allowed to steal the money of other people. What could possibly go wrong?

I know at one point you pretended you believed in police reform. Is this what your version of police reform looks like, because if so that type of police reform also popular in the South with Emit Till. I think you will have a harder sell here in Seattle.

I honestly can't track all your Qananon inspired sex trafficking accusation used to justify cops stealing money from the poor under asset forfeiture. I suppose when one is as morally bankrupt as you are, Davison becomes the logical choice. I suppose she shares your distain for the marginalize in society. There are simply a certain number of sociapaths in society. I'm glad you make no bones about what you are.

@25: Dude, now your just being a liar.

Let me cut and paste what you skipped from the story here:

https://www.kuow.org/stories/a-homeless-man-steals-clothes-from-a-seattle-goodwill-goes-to-jail-his-story-isn-t-unusual

"A homeless man steals clothes from a Seattle Goodwill, goes to jail. His story isn’t unusual"
When the Goodwill loss prevention officer caught him and asked why he took the clothes, the man said he was homeless – he needed them. The clothes were returned to the store’s stock, but two months later, Seattle city prosecutors charged him with theft. There is a warrant out for his arrest.

omeless mother with her young son outside Goodwill’s Central District store. The officer had watched her on the closed-circuit TV hiding items from the kids’ section in her purse – $62.

"The officer filed a report with the Seattle police, and the Seattle City Attorney’s Office followed up with a theft charge. To dismiss it, she agreed to 20 hours of community service, to notify the court of any changes of address and to stay away from Goodwill."

"A third homeless person, a 29-year-old man, was charged with theft for stealing $36.66 in merchandise from Goodwill — t-shirts, socks and headphones. He spent 19 days in jail."

I'm disappointed District. When did 19 days in jail become "and nothing happened!" in your world?

Lying and bigotry is Tensor's thing. You and I may disagree, but you never pretended what is written is not actually there.

What happened to you man?

@25: Dude, this must be a misunderstanding. We may have our disagreements over crime and punishment, but you never struck me as a sadistic monster who gets off on torturing the poor. For instance:

"https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/thirty-two-stories-jeffrey-epstein-prison-death/596029/

"Not everyone in custody in America dies, of course. Some survive. Randy Miller was arrested, drunk, for trespassing at a convenience store in Sarasota, Florida. As he was booked at a local jail, one of the arresting officers threw peanuts on the ground and ordered Miller to eat them. Miller, who was homeless, intoxicated, and handcuffed, groveled on the ground for his peanuts. Guards looked on and laughed as the officer kicked the peanuts for Miller to retrieve."

https://nypost.com/2020/07/16/former-honolulu-cop-sentenced-for-forcing-homeless-man-to-lick-urinal/
The 37-year-old told the cops he would do “anything” to avoid getting arrested, according to court papers.
“If you lick the urinal you won’t get arrested,” Rabago told the man.
Rabago threatened to beat him and shove his face in a toilet if he didn’t lick the urinal, Kobayashi said."

I know you don't approve of stuff like this. Tensor will tell you stuff like this is totally justified because yada yada human trafficking save the children badda-bing badda boom good to work for the SPOG" and so they deserved it and Davison would probably agree with him, but I know you're better than taking pleasure in watching the homeless forced to lick toilets for the prison guards forcing the homeless to grovel hungry for peanuts while they laugh. Because you know, human trafficking so it's all good.

That's not who you are.

@28: As was explained to you in the original comment thread, which I referenced @17, the source of the allegations was the trafficked, enslaved humans working for the crime bosses. Not the police, who discovered the trafficked and enslaved men when investigating an interstate drug cartel, and not anyone else. At your explicit request, you were provided with public media stories confirming all of this, and yet you continue to lie, you continue to deny the very existence of these crime victims. That's because you and NTK (who was either pig-ignorant or bald-faced lying about the cases she chose to reference in the original story) have an anti-law-enforcement ideology, and that ideology fails miserably once the rest of us start talking about the very real harm done to very real human victims by very real criminals. Once we start doing that, NTK's proposal to let almost all misdemeanor crimes go unpunished looks like the screaming failure that it very much is.

NTK decided to portray drug-smuggling human traffickers and enslavers as sympathetic victims, of both government discrimination, and of police abuse of seizure laws. She's your candidate; you get to own this debacle. Constantly lying about it here will get you nothing but more criticism and ridicule.

@29/30 Wow, two responses and two totally different takes. Both equally asinine. Let's start with the first one. Yes, the last guy served 19 days in jail but he stole socks, shirt and headphone. You started by talking about the guy who stole a jacket and that is what I was responding too. He served no time and was not even arrested. So in the 3 cases referenced you had one who wasn't arrested, one who served community service and one who was in jail for 3 weeks. It's hard to say if that is appropriate without knowing their prior history but what I do know is none of that is equivalent to breaking rocks on some chain gang like you are implying.

Where you really jump the shark though is your second post. Are you seriously comparing shoplifting to Jeffrey Epstein? To quote Taylor Swift, you need to calm down if you are in any way using a man who kidnapped and raped children and then hung himself in jail as your example of why people shouldn't be prosecuted. Shit, under your scenario no one should be in jail. In a way though I want to thank you. Your example highlights how completely ridiculous and ignorant this whole debate is. In order for us to live in a society with each other there has to be a social contract and part of that contract is don't take stuff that doesn't belong to you. There are plenty of homeless agencies out there where you can get a winter coat or socks and not have to steal. Stealing is lazy and bullshit and only victimizes others. Not enforcing stealing because of poverty is similarly lazy and does nothing to solve the underlying issue. It only creates another class of victims.

You're right. You and I don't agree on much but I appreciate the fact you are willing to debate the merits so the lurkers on these forums can hopefully make an informed decision about their upcoming vote. The cases of people stealing bread so they don't starve to death or a jacket to stay warm is a very small percentage of the overall cases and for those I trust the courts to take the facts into account and make the right decision. In no way will I ever support a city atty who unilaterally wants to make those decisions for us because she knows what is best. That road never leads anywhere good. I hope Seattle voters think long and hard about this and send a resounding answer that they support a judicial system with many voices and not a wannabe idealolgue.

Lets be clear, if there is a compensation fund it will not make people whole. Seattle city Council passed a recent ordinance that rental housing providers reimbursement for damage due to domestic violence. Seattle's ordinance does not allow the landlord to collect for damage due to DV. The problem is the council will not fund it. So, good luck with the crime reim fund.

Royale simps so hard for ntk. are you on her staff yet? you should be lol

Holy Crap! Another bullshit program designed to further destroy this city.

Really! A fund to subsidize bad behavior. So now the city pays businesses because it doesn't enforce the laws of civil decency. It doesn't work that way.

And the worst part is some bizarre justification of theft if its under a certain dollar amount.

We have crossed the Rubicon and we need to vote the clowns who propose these stupid programs/initiatives out of city government, now before they destroy the city.