Good morning, and welcome to bizarro world. The United States Department of Justice, which continues to litigate a consent decree against the Ctiy of Seattle for overpolicing, is accusing the City of Seattle of being an “anarchist jurisdiction” for placing restrictions on its police force. And in response to the city’s refusal to accept federal support for SPD over the summer, the DOJ is… threatening to withdraw federal support for SPD? But hey, at least the DOJ is finally doing its part to “defund SPD.”
Here’s the news.
KING, KIRO, KOMO, the New York Post, and the Washington Examiner report that the Department of Justice has declared Seattle, Portland, and New York City to be “anarchist jurisdictions” as a first step toward withholding federal funding from the cities.
Q13 interviews SPD interim Chief Adrian Diaz.
Capitol Hill Seattle Blog previews the Council’s vote today on a new, higher budget from the Madison RapidRide bus route.
The Urbanist argues that the City Council’s “climate note” change to its internal legislative sumarries is a “misguided distraction.”
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Kevin: As of 09/21/2020 you are now on record as supporting SPD defunding. This is the quote from Kevin: “… at least the DOJ is finally doing its part to defund SPD.” You have put a significant amount of effort into pretending to be objective, when in fact you have been in favor of SPD defunding all along. The reason why this is important is that I will be reminding you in the future about the mess you have helped to create in Seattle, and I don’t want you to attempt to weasel out of it. Get ready for the truth to slap you in the face. One alternate outcome is that it turns out that the City Council was only kidding. Another is that criminals all turn out to be really nice people who just needed the police to go away in order to show their warm and fuzzy side.
Which outcome are you expecting, Kevin? Steve Willie.
You are reading far too much into my comment. I was simply pointing out the obvious irony in the DOJ threatening to reduce funding to SPD in repsonse to the city cuting funding to SPD.
I have never asserted that I’m “objective.” I certainly have opinions and have not been bashful about expressing them when I think it is appropriate. I do try to be fair and non-tribal in my assessment of complex issues, and in both my praise and my criticism.
I have never said I am in favor of “defunding SPD.” “Defunding” is a very vague term, and I would never throw my support behind something so ill-defined.
That said, there is broad consensus across the political spectrum that we ask SPD to respond to too many kinds of “emergencies,” such as people in mental health crises, that don’t require someone with a gun showing up (and often are made more difficult by a person with a gun showing up). I certainly support creating community-based, civilian organizations that can relieve SPD of the responsiblity and burden to respond to some of those, and once those are up and running if we find that SPD is then overstaffed, I would suport reducing the size of the department.
For the record, I don’t support picking an arbitrary target such as “50%” for cutting SPD.
As for what outcomes I am “expecting,” I am waiting to see a solid plan proposed.