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I would love to see a very detailed budget of the SPD; the one that they have doesn't break down expense by category, but by location. I have a very strong inkling that $205 million is more than the combined total of all SPD's payroll. Remember that police departments have lots of other expenses than payroll. The "thought process" behind the 50% budget reduction appears to be that this will reduce the number of cops by 50%. Guess again. Yes, as you cut the force there will be reductions in some other expenses; presumably the department would need only half as many patrol cars, computers, etc. But other expenses (fixed expenses) don't scale.
After watching that special, Seattle is Dying, I can see that SPD is being required to handle far too many mentally ill people far too often. That said, putting more mental health professionals on the street isn't the answer; getting more of the mentally ill off the street seems more likely to result in positive outcomes for everybody.
I know I shouldn't point this out but somebody should tell Vox that if you have a young journalist with a squeaky little-girl voice, having her use kids' toy blocks as props might undercut the notion that this is a serious presentation on an adult topic.
This is pretty close to my idea. We could get by with less police - IF (big if) we had much more robust social services than we do. Better societal attitudes and funding towards treatment of addiction and mental health.
The catch being, we can't just strip funding from the police and use it for social services, because it will take time to build up such services.
Ramp up social services for mental health and addiction. THEN we can start reducing policing levels. Sometimes you gotta spend more money to build the ability to start saving money. We need to do that.
While policing levels remain high, implement better use of forces and disciplinary practices. Do sentencing reform and prison reform. Shift more to crime prevention and away from "maintaining order", which has shown itself to often be massively counterproductive.
This is pretty close to my idea. We could get by with less police - IF (big if) we had much more robust social services than we do. Better societal attitudes and funding towards treatment of addiction and mental health.
The catch being, we can't just strip funding from the police and use it for social services, because it will take time to build up such services.
Ramp up social services for mental health and addiction. THEN we can start reducing policing levels. Sometimes you gotta spend more money to build the ability to start saving money. We need to do that.
While policing levels remain high, implement better use of forces and disciplinary practices. Do sentencing reform and prison reform. Shift more to crime prevention and away from "maintaining order", which has shown itself to often be massively counterproductive.
This is extremely close to what I had been planning on saying in a post here later today. We need actual plans to transition specific duties if there were to be a safe transition, not just a catch-all buzz word of Social Services, and the hope that they can do everything.
To my knowledge, besides CHOP and maybe a few other examples, we have never attempted an experiment with such an idea of lawlessness. There will be a lot of unknowns until it is actually carried out.
It certainly is a bold experiment with the lives of 750,000 people.
Leadership in the City of Seattle has been a fan of "bold experiments" for a while now. Including the Seattle School district's plans for "critical math" that includes discussions on how math is inherently a tool of oppression.
Arizona is full of whackos. But I like this brand of whacko better than the brand of whacko I left behind when I moved our of WA.
That’s a pretty lame attempt at a gotcha. The point was always simply to have the power to defend yourself. Tyrannical government is only one of the potential threats.
And it’s a god-damn attractive point right about now.
Pretty sure you're both looking at different points.
Zig is looking at "point to defend yourself" as an attractive point.
Arth is looking at "defend against tyrannical government" as being the attractive point Zig's talking about.
Leadership in the City of Seattle has been a fan of "bold experiments" for a while now. Including the Seattle School district's plans for "critical math" that includes discussions on how math is inherently a tool of oppression.
That's a shame, because all it takes is a little creativity to turn math into a tool of liberation:
Q. If Jesse has three molotov cocktails and he hurls two at police cars, how many does he have left?
A. What does it matter? What matters is that he was furthering societal change by a radical act!
That's a shame, because all it takes is a little creativity to turn math into a tool of liberation:
Q. If Jesse has three molotov cocktails and he hurls two at police cars, how many does he have left?
A. What does it matter? What matters is that he was furthering societal change by a radical act!
I am really saddened and fearful for what this will mean for Seattle. The city council recently banned the use of any crowd control measures by SPD, and even the ability for them to own the devices. They are literally only left with batons, shields, and guns.
Last week, a group of about 150 people roamed around Seattle, burning and destroying businesses without any intervention by the Police. However, it is about to get a whole lot worse. The Chief just signaled that they will likely continue to not intervene unless it is life or death.
As you may have seen, yesterday the federal court chose to not intercede, at this time, in the Council’s ordinance banning the possession or use of less-lethal tools typically used in crowd control situations – including the 40mm “blue nose” and any chemical irritant.
This does include OC (“pepper spray”), if it is used at a demonstration, rally, or in any way that it would affect someone other than the intended individual. Since it would nearly impossible to keep OC spray from affecting anyone nearby, the ordinance effectively bans the use of OC as well.
The ordinance goes into effect this weekend, on Sunday, July 26th.
Given these facts, and with many individuals clearly intent on violence as in recent events, we are significantly adjusting our deployment plans for all upcoming major events, including this weekend.
Your commanders will provide more detailed information, but I want to be clear that I will never ask you to risk your personal safety to protect property without the tools to do so in a safe way.
We will closely monitor all events, and the incident commanders will direct any action in line with laws, department policies, and officer safety considerations. We will continue to address life safety incidents and calls for service.
With no intervention by SPD, and the ability to destroy anything they want with impunity short of "life safety" incidents, the SPD will not intervene to protect property without the tools to safely protect their officers from harm. Police have definitely had many injuries from last weekend, and there will definitely be a lot more injuries this weekend, although I am hopeful that no one will be killed.
To be clear, the Police Chief just told Seattle residents that if their house, building, or business is being attacked or set on fire by a large mob, they will not be there to protect you unless it's life or death. If you want to protect yourself, you will either need to run away, or shoot them yourself.
I would strongly suggest the police direct and funnel the rioters and looters into the neighborhoods where the Seattle City Council members have their homes.
With any luck - the city councillors who voted for this insanity will lose everything in a burning violent maelstrom of attacking rioters and looters.
If any of the city councillors or their families are put at risk of death or grievous bodily harm by rioters or other criminals - the police should give them advice on how to defuse the situation verbally. The police must give this advice at a distance using loudspeakers as police officers should never be put in a situation where they might have to use force on a voter.
That’s a pretty lame attempt at a gotcha. The point was always simply to have the power to defend yourself. Tyrannical government is only one of the potential threats.
And it’s a god-damn attractive point right about now.
1. A federal judge has overturned the ban on less-lethal weapons, so the cops can go back to firing tear gas grenades directly at people's faces and torsos.
2. The places damaged by people were specifically targeted. One was owned by a cop & his wife, one of the cops who shot a pregnant mentally-ill woman to death 3 years ago. One was an Amazon-owned business. I don't recall what the others were right now, but it was targeted, not general mayhem.
This is not to say I approve of their actions, I'm just clarifying that they were not randomly burning and looting. So far the only major looting turned out to be a criminal group trying to take advantage of the protests, and they were identified and caught (it probably works better to be somewhere near the protests instead of hitting the high-end shopping center in a posh suburb).
1. A federal judge has overturned the ban on less-lethal weapons, so the cops can go back to firing tear gas grenades directly at people's faces and torsos.
2. The places damaged by people were specifically targeted. One was owned by a cop & his wife, one of the cops who shot a pregnant mentally-ill woman to death 3 years ago. One was an Amazon-owned business. I don't recall what the others were right now, but it was targeted, not general mayhem.
This is not to say I approve of their actions, I'm just clarifying that they were not randomly burning and looting. So far the only major looting turned out to be a criminal group trying to take advantage of the protests, and they were identified and caught (it probably works better to be somewhere near the protests instead of hitting the high-end shopping center in a posh suburb).
You forgot to mention that the mentally ill woman was armed with a knife and told the officers to "get ready". She refused repeated commands to drop the knife and the officers did not have a taser. She was within a few feet of the officers in a small kitchen. It ain't like TV where anybody can instantly become Bruce Lee and kung fu a knife wielding person with no chance of getting an artery slit, a knife in the throat, or their bowels spilled onto the floor.
This was not the first time the police had to deal with this poor deranged woman. She held a pair of scissors to her child's neck on a previous occasion but the police were able to talk her down. You can talk someone down when they are threatening someone else - it's a lot harder to talk someone down when they are threatening your life with a knife within striking distance.
BTW - that "criminal group" seems to be a pretty large and very active group. What proof do we have that the "peaceful protesters" are not purposely protesting wherever they want the criminal group to strike? Seems like an interesting coincidence that wherever the protesters are a "legitimate mob justice target" just happens to be there as well.
2. The places damaged by people were specifically targeted. One was owned by a cop & his wife, one of the cops who shot a pregnant mentally-ill woman to death 3 years ago. One was an Amazon-owned business. I don't recall what the others were right now, but it was targeted, not general mayhem.
It wasn’t invisible to me either. But you don’t have to approve of something to think it’s better than something else. You can think one bad thing is less bad than another bad thing.
And that appeared to be what you were saying, though you are free to clarify. But your post didn’t contain my claim (that it’s worse if the violence isn’t random), either because you didn’t agree with it or because you just didn’t include it.
Thank you for posting this. This is good to have on this thread.
I would challenge you to watch this again with a more critical eye.
The most critical mistake of defund the police is that they do not think of how specific duties of police would be sufficiently replaced by social services. It is often used as a catch all phrase without much thought past that. Critical issues that could not be easily replaced by social services include:
Reckless driving
DUI
Murder Investigations
Drive by Shootings
Arson
Active shooter situations
Sexual Predators
Active rape
Mass shooting
Serial killers
armed robberies
Car jacking
Home invasion
etc.
The Vox video starts out by identifying some of the well known problems with our justice structure today.
80% of people arrested are arrested for misdemeanor crimes. While Vox does not go into as much of the details on why this is a serious problem, those arrests can have lifelong consequences. Problems in getting a job, legal fees, and negative interactions with criminals in jail. Those factors make it harder for them to recover and become productive members of society.
The budgets for police are HUGE, and in many case they far outspend community services that can help people to guide their life choices into something that lead them into being successful and productive members of society.
While black people of color commit a higher percentage of crime per capita than other races, they are also much more heavily policed and represent a disproportionate amount of arrests. There are many factors that go into this, not just racial abuse by police, but factors such as educational inequities, issues of poverty, and other areas that have major impacts.
Police have more and more been asked to cover for underfunded social services.
While the solutions they provide start well, they ignore the VAST amount of data that shows the increases in deaths and problems that arise when police services are reduced without an adequate replacement. Basically mental health cases, and issues with homeless, could likely be better served if social services presence was available both during and after an encounter with police, but you would not want to send a squad of social workers into an armed robbery.
The failure to make this distinction is the critical failure of the defund the police movement.
They provided data that showed that deaths went up when policing went down, but assumed that this would not be the case since they would put money into social services. To be clear, increased social services would likely have a positive impact on misdemeanors, not just by changing police response for mental health situations, but for a reduction in jails for low level offenses for programs that focus on recidivism. However, for the main factors that affect deaths from crime, you cannot just assume that deaths will not follow previous instances of death rate increases due to a reduction of police presence if you do not have something to adequately replace the police services in those areas.
They also brought up the idea that the problem would be much better if we were in a communist system. That people with enough stuff would not need to steal. However, we have no plan to move to a communist system, so to plan such a major component of the defund the police scheme to something they know would not happen is disingenuous.
They than went on to describe that social services if funded enough could lead to being able to abolish the police. The problem with that is that there is just not the type of services that exist that would be able to replace some of the key police functions I listed at the start.
They note that those problems including violent crime, while still causing thousands of deaths, still represent a small percentage of the arrests that police make. However, the reason that they are so small is because we have spent so much money on addressing them. If we take away the ability to address those life and death problems with just a buzz word of "social services" those problems, and the real life people that represent the deaths and assault victim statistics will balloon.
1. A federal judge has overturned the ban on less-lethal weapons, so the cops can go back to firing tear gas grenades directly at people's faces and torsos.
2. The places damaged by people were specifically targeted. One was owned by a cop & his wife, one of the cops who shot a pregnant mentally-ill woman to death 3 years ago. One was an Amazon-owned business. I don't recall what the others were right now, but it was targeted, not general mayhem.
This is not to say I approve of their actions, I'm just clarifying that they were not randomly burning and looting. So far the only major looting turned out to be a criminal group trying to take advantage of the protests, and they were identified and caught (it probably works better to be somewhere near the protests instead of hitting the high-end shopping center in a posh suburb).
That is very good that the Judge did that. That was very close to a lot of people getting hurt, and the Seattle city council being hurt.
As for the victims of the mob last week, that is a very specific hit list you mention. Not just random looting and burning.
It certainly get closer to approaching targeted hate crimes, and purposeful terrorization of specific groups in their community. It is unfortunate for the community, and the victims that none of them were caught. Hopefully they will spend many, many years in jail if they are.
Minneapolis residents in some areas still recovering from rioting and unrest are forming community watch and security groups, some bearing firearms, to fight a surge of crime in the wake of the George Floyd killing in May. At least one neighborhood has put up barricades to keep away outsiders.
In late June, residents near a commercial strip that had been looted, and the 3rd Precinct station that was abandoned and burned, were seeing a surge of shooting and drug-related crime on their block.
“It got to the point where crime had no consequences,” said Tania Rivera, 30, who runs a child-care center with her mother. “It was being done deliberately out in the open. Drive-through drug dealing, drive-through prostitution, everything from gunshots to assaults to sex out in the public. Everything you didn’t want your neighborhood to look like.”
So after a number of community meetings, neighbors began constructing a barrier to close off two blocks of their street, first with trash cans, then debris. For a while, a boat on a trailer protected one intersection. Eventually, a nearby iron maker constructed a permanent gate. Police gave their approval as long as emergency responders could get through if requested by the neighborhood.
Neighborhood men also began an armed patrol, kicking out anyone who didn’t belong on the block after dark.
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