Comments

1

I hope Mosqueda plans to run for national office at some point in her career.

(yes I know, you support it too becsuse it will get her off the SCC you are very clever)

2

"Councilmember Alex Pedersen clarified that the Strategic Plan, despite what its name might suggest, was “more of a high-level visionary document, rather than an implementation plan with details on how to reduce crime.”

Yet Hannah still elected to write a headline that suggests the Strategic Plan was something more.

3

@1 Mosqueda would have to move to run for national office. She is in Jayapal's district and that is her seat until she doesn't want it anymore and she is unelectable as a statewide candidate due to her baggage from being on the SCC. I could see her running for mayor at some point or a county position but she'll probably need to stay on the SCC for a few more years before she can look to make a move.

5

Isn't it more plausible that Charleena Lyles would have just ended up stabbing a mental health provider to death, as she attempted to do to those officers, or her own children (that she believed were werewolves)?

6

Almost everything the SPD does now is based on data, SPD data. It justifies and supposedly measures any claimed successes and is used to show federal Judge Robart that the SPD is in compliance with "constitutional policing."

The problem is that the data is self-serving and opaque, for an example see: https://twitter.com/bessarabia1/status/1496247020385882117.

In an attempt to explain their missing data SPD reached out to me to calmly & methodically explain that their data is perfect & that reality is flawed (seriously). When people in crisis who are killed by the SPD are missing from their Crisis Intervention data there is a serious problem & lack of transparency.

But, the CM Herbold & the rest of Public Safety just continue to believe!

In Nashville Tennessee on January 27th the Nashville police killed Landon Eastep, a man experiencing a behavioral health crisis and wielding an edged weapon. Within 24 hours Nashville's Citizen Oversight Board officially released a statement calling the killing "gravely disturbing" and announced an independent investigation. In Nashville an independent investigation means just that: an investigation that does not involve police officers doing the investigation.

In Seattle, on January 5th, the Seattle police killed a man experiencing a behavioral health crisis and wielding an edged weapon. Nearly three months later Seattle's Community Police Commission has released no official statement of any sort. Nearly three months later we still do not even know his name. His case quickly disappeared from the headlines and from public awareness. If and when an investigation is done in Seattle it will be SPD officers investigating other SPD officers.

It is hard to comprehend two such radically different responses to two such similar incidents of an unnecessary police killing, occurring in cities so similar in size and demographics.

It is clear that a proactive and community involved citizen's oversight board in Nashville helps produce a radically different response compared to what happens in Seattle. In Seattle, the CPC's silence begets everyone's silence.

Nashville has had their Citizens Oversight Board for 3 years and 2 months. It is a system chosen by the people through an initiative. It works.

On March 27th the Seattle CPC, part of a dysfunctional oversight system forced on the people of Seattle, will be starting its tenth year. It does not work.

Like Nashville, we in Seattle need to build, through a City initiative, a police accountability system that provides full civilian community control over police. Go to SeattleSTOP.org to find out how.

7

@6 Don't you think it's more likely that the two shooting incidents regarding Persons Experiencing a Murderous Stabbing Crisis, while unfortunate, were probably both justified uses of force?

8

@7 In the UK virtually no one (except in rare specific terrorist incident) wielding an edged weapon -- even fucking swords, scabbard, katanas, etc. -- has been shot or killed by police for many decades. To varying degrees the same goes for virtually every developed nation. But, I don't know, maybe Americans are just more violent, stupid, and incompetent. I think we can safely say they do suffer from a huge fucking empathy deficit.

9

And before anyone rambles on with their poorly informed & malformed thoughts on this topic of why cops in US constantly murder people in behavioral crisis wielding edged weapons read up: https://hjgale.tumblr.com/post/643851682764275712/cops-in-the-uk-dont-kill-people-with-knives

11

@10 Thanks for the real life example of everything I said in comment 8. One cannot argue with an empathy deficit and folks that believe a death sentence is appropriate for the behavioral consequences of a failed mental health system.

12

It would be nice if there was a link to the plan, instead of having it strangersplained to us. If I want a narrative of a council meeting, I'd......actually I can't imagine ever wanting a narrative of a council meeting.

14

This article makes Teresa Mosqueda's positions very unclear. Krieg points out that Mosqueda has sympathies toward small businesses who are getting robbed yet seems to question the practice of an undercover SPD officer arresting 5 shoplifters at Target. So it's OK to rob Target but not a Mom and Pop? Apparently Mosqueda doesn't know that the shoplifting from the downtown Target and Ross fuel the Fentanyl trade. Keep up the good work SPD and CM Mosqueda should be lucky that he basically ran for reelection against someone who couldn't bother to run a campaign.

16

The cold hard fact is that the SPD has had the budget to hire more cops, but never does.

Is it management?

Usually it is.

17

@13:

For fuck's sake, are you really so stupid that you don't grasp the very basic concept that people suffering a "behavioral health crisis" are, by definition, not in control of their own behavior and actions? It's not like they have a fucking switch in their head they can turn on and off at-will that toggles between "sane" and "mentally unstable". The proper response to someone suffering a behavioral health crisis is NOT to go fucking bat-shit crazy on them in turn; that is literally the exact opposite of every protocol established by the mental health establishment, and it should be the absolute LAST resort for law enforcement as well. As @8 makes abundantly clear, it's been proven time and again in every single fucking civilized country in the world to be both unnecessary and counter-productive.

19

lol Mosqueda, you've had two years to setup some police alternatives. what happened? sitting on your ass all day during covid wfh?
must be rough watching the whiplash from "defund" to "hire more cops nobody feels safe" from the front row.

20

CM Mosqueda is a virtue signaling clown. It is tragic that she was re-elected despite spending her council career turning Seattle into a dystopian sh*thole with her “stop the sweeps” bs.

21

Everybody knows I am strongly in favor of keeping close tabs on the cops.
Police brutality and abuse of power has no place in civilized society.
And police have shown over and over and over again that they will not change, until forced to.

Here would be my own personal list of action items.

. Institute a meaningful civilian oversight board. One that means something.
Make them answerable to the mayor ( and city council ), and to the public.
Making membership an elected position might help, too, like the School Board.
. Make it a legal requirement that all new hires, without exception, must live inside the city limits. How can somebody with a gun possibly identify with city residents, when they live 150 miles away, and only come into the city a couple days a week when they're on duty, and never even talk to city residents, only fellow cops?
. Find a way to expand that residence requirement to existing cops. Give them 2 years, or 3 years, or 4 years, to move into the city if they want to continue employment.
. Re-institute foot patrols in the downtown district.
Foot patrols in neighborhood business districts would be good, too.
. Find a way to eliminate wide-spread "cooping out". I still see cops sleeping in their cop cars on the night shift, in city parks, in parking lots, and behind strip malls.
How can they possibly "serve and protect" when they're tucked in, with their blankey and teddy bear?
. No tear gas. None.
. No concussion grenades. None. ( Popularly called by the cutesy name "flash-bangs" in the press. )
. No rubber bullets. None.
. Eliminate the off-switch on cop-cameras. They must be on, and recording, from the start of the shift until the end of the shift.
. All cop-camera videos must be made public. No exceptions.

. I don't know how you would do it, but find a way to prosecute cops who "testilie" in court, under oath. I've been on jury duty many times, and every single time, without exception, a cop has committed perjury under oath on the witness stand. Not one has ever been held to account for that.

I'm sure there are others. This is just what comes to mind over breakfast.

23

"...it seemed as if all the council’s timid defund spirit had dried up."

That result can be traced to last November's city-wide elections in Seattle, when "defund" candidates NTK and Oliver saw their (wanna-be) political careers buried beneath massive landslides.

24

@22
It's a random thing, isn't it? Supposedly it's alphabetical by name. My name just keeps hitting the jackpot.

I'm serious about the residency requirements, too. Lived in many places, maybe half had residency requirements for police, half didn't. The ones that didn't ( like Seattle ) had a police force full of thugs, who viewed the people they were supposed to "serve and protect" as the enemy, only fit to be shot at. Never get out of their cop cars except to pick up another bag of donuts, or to drive home after their shift, to some all-white gated community surrounded by corn fields and feedlots.


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