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Dispatch from the War Zone in Seattle
On my favorite KOMO Web site today, there is a sad story about a King County worker assaulted, right outside the King County Courthouse in (used-to-be) beautiful Downtown Seattle. This is so disgusting that I am going to copy some of that story for you here. This is what the City of Seattle and County of King have become. Please do follow the link and read the whole story.
In September, Kara was assaulted just outside the King County Courthouse after leaving work to head to the train.
Surveillance video shows a man cross the road, mumbling to himself. He steps in front of Kara, she goes around him, and then he hits her in the back of the head, leaving Kara with a concussion.
Those are the facts of the case. County employee, just walking down the street minding her own business, gets jumped by a street vagrant and injured.
But the worst of it is what happened later, when the good reporters at KOMO News tried to find someone in City and County Government to address the issue. Again, from the article:
It’s been nearly two years since we (of KOMO News) first shared concerns from King County employees about the scene outside the courthouse – people drinking and abusing drugs; people in crisis, shaking and screaming.
Plus, county employees and jurors are being assaulted. Many of them no longer feel safe walking in and out of the courthouse.
King County judges have been asking police to ramp up patrols during high-traffic times for county workers and jurors.
“It’s hard to say the needle has moved much,” Judge Sean O’Donnell told KOMO about conditions outside the courthouse.
“Members of the public deserve to feel safe coming to their courthouse,” Judge Jim Rogers added.
Judge Rogers believes some jurors aren’t even showing up because they’re so concerned about safety.
County council members are also asking for more support from the city.
KOMO spent hours outside the 3rd Avenue entrance to the courthouse, only seeing an occasional Seattle police bicycle patrol despite several emergency calls.
“I want them to come here and experience this,” Kara Armatis said about city leaders.
KOMO brought those concerns to Seattle’s City Hall and received very little response.
Seattle City Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez chairs the public safety committee. She ignored KOMO’s request for comment. [Emphasis mine.]
So it looks to me like the members of the Seattle City Council are walling themselves up in their fancy new headquarters, and positively ignoring the plight of their city residents just outside their doors. Who gets more consideration in the City of Seattle? Taxpayers, or criminals and vagrants? This story answers that question, doesn’t it?
Originally posted at RushBabe49.com.
Published in Policing
(sigh)
Well…what are you still doing down there? You can buy our house when we move to PA!
NYC under de Blasio is heading in the same direction. There where almost no homeless in the streets under Bloomberg. They gradually started appearing under dB and the problem has gotten much worse in the last year. They may be heading to the bad old days pre Giuliani.
And a piece of good news this morning. Seattle threw out their only openly-socialist city council critter. Kshama Sawant, author of the “Amazon Tax” lost her bid for another term upsetting the apple-cart. Good riddance!
Not so fast, RushBabe. I just read at 9am PST that while she trails by 1,600 votes, there are [surprise!! /sarc] over 5,300 more ballots to be counted. By the time they get through those and look behind the copy machne and check the trunks of all the county workers’ cars, who can say? I mean, this is Seattle we’re talking about.
The policing problem in Seattle will only get worse. A city council and mayor like Seattle has not only made life miserable for its residents it makes life a living hell for police officers. A probationary officer has no protection, and can be fired at anytime for any reason. An experienced officer, or an officer that is part of the minimum staffing model can also be subject to retribution in the form of demotion, suspension, and lousy assignments. There is no incentive for an experienced officer to train a probationary officer to excel at proactive police work, and put their own career at risk of retribution from psychotic Leftists.
Eventually the applicant pool for Seattle police positions will dry up. There are two psychotic Portland city council members that don’t just disdain police officers, they hate them. Portland has about 100 positions for police officers that they cannot fill. That is no accident.
Applicants will seek out cities that will support them, they will avoid cities like Portland, and Seattle.
Absolutely, Doug. Morale in the Seattle Police Department is abysmal, AND they are under a federal “consent agreement” from the Obama era for “brutality” or something stupid like that. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to work for a city run by 1960s radicals who still view police as “Pigs”.
I used to go to museums, and music shows with my dad and eat Chinese food with my grandparents in Seattle. It’s heartbreaking to see what is happening.
Agree @Fritz. If past elections are any indicators, the Dems are perfectly capable of producing a mysterious box of votes found in a closet to put their candidate over the top.
This is a difficult situation to know exactly when it is you need to defend yourself or call for police. The video appears to show the man swiping up with an open hand (this is really juvenile, but I think in grade school boys would flip up a girl’s pony tail) with plenty of people around. Thankfully, she was not struck to the ground or become unconscious, she did not get robbed. It’s really bad behavior, but I’m not sure what kind of misdemeanor it might be. What could police charge a person with? Is this what they call disorderly conduct? Or is it some category of assault? It seems pretty far from any kind of felony.
Except they are ALL Dems in Seattle. It’s just a question of Left, Farther Left, Socialist, or Communist.
All the council members are Dems, but at least socialist Sawant is being defeated by a significant margin as of 4:22pm. Her replacement is Egan Orion, the director of the annual gay pride parade. Okay, he’s a lefty but less left than Sawant and believes in a softer approach with the business community (or so he says).
Calling @susaninseattle. How do you vote in Council races? Do you vote? What’s a conservative to do in Seattle?
And see what I just found in a story on MyNorthwest.com. Story is about the city where Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos lives not being able to pass a property tax levy. Can you believe the disparity in tax rates? No wonder retirees can’t live in Seattle!
Essentially, the owner of a $2 million home — the low-end of home prices in Medina — would pay $1,680 in property taxes per year to the city under the new levy, an increase of roughly $400. Right now, the city’s homeowners pay just 64 cents for every $1,000 of assessed value, among the lowest in the state. Comparatively, Bellevue pays 94 cents for every $1,000, while Redmond pays $1.15. Seattle pays $8.29 for every $1,000 of assessed value
This is amazing information. For comparison, property taxes on my brother’s home in Camden, NJ run about $30. for every $1,000 of assessed value. Probably close to as high as you will find across the country. Assessed value was well under $100,000. Does anybody have any idea whether the public schools are suffering in Medina, WA?
Well, but those that are not exercise well practiced skills of invisibility.
I pay a little over $20/1000 in a suburb located in Milwaukee County.
But I’m guessing my house would assess for a lot more if it was on the coast.
I moved from New York to Seattle in 1969. It was an incredible city in those days. The mass layoffs from Boeing had left the city practically empty. My second day there I found a beautiful waterfront apartment on Alki Point where I remained for five years paying only $150 rent per month the whole time. Shortly before my son was born we bought a house in Madison Park for $28K. That house is now worth somewhere in the millions.
The changes in Seattle began in the early 1980s. I worked for Merrill Lynch for five years during that decade. I lived downtown and walked to work. When I left the brokerage industry and returned to teaching I once again had to drive my car on a daily basis. The difference both in the amount of traffic and the aggressive behavior of drivers was appalling. It just got worse from there on. Eventually, I moved south to rural Pierce county, east of Tacoma. I put about 10X as many miles on my bicycles and I do on my car, and I stay clear of Seattle as much as I can. Being retired from Seattle Public Schools for the last six years and away from the city allows me to live a much better life.
Seattle was always a left leaning city, but it has become far worse in recent times. What I saw in the SPS administration for years has moved up into the city administration. Nothing was learned by anyone from the continual failures of the public schools and their absurd school board and administrators. It was a microcosm of what Seattle itself was going to become, one failed, stupid idea after another with nothing learned from the failure. So long as lots of tax dollars were available, city council members and mayors learned nothing from the massive losses they incurred by their stupid ideas. Seattle may well be on its way to becoming San Francisco North.
It’s not easy, RB. Our choices are limited to left and further left. This year was easier though as the further left candidate is an ardent socialist. One of his doorbellers didn’t know what he was asking for when he rang at our house last week. After challenge after challenge, he turned on his heel and raced down the steps. I’m hoping he was crying.
We carry on knowing the City is insane, has known much better days, and we simply live our lives. As I’ve stated before on other threads, we have aging family to whom we are dedicated, so we’re here for the duration. We make the best of it.
On a related topic, I see it is being reported this Friday morning that, as of Thursday’s count, incumbent socialist Kshama Sawant has closed to just over 700 votes behind her challenger, as the ballots keep getting tallied.
Mail-in voting really is a sham.
Sawant just went ahead by 500 votes. Seattle is also voting to reinstate affirmative action while it’s being rejected elsewhere.
The late Friday update had Sawant ahead by over 1500 votes.
Sigh.
The Seattle results are so different from the rest of the state. I’ve been looking at the Washington secretary of state site with results from counties throughout Washington. 88 is losing everywhere except for King county, Whatcom, Jefferson and San Juan. Thank heavens for the rest of the state as it will save us from ourselves. The city of Seattle is so far left as to be unbelievable.One troubling thing I’ve noticed is that when I went to bed last night there were 5000 ballots still to be counted in Seattle, and when I woke up this morning it said there were 6300 ballots still to be counted. Where did those 1300 ballots come from overnight?
And this is on the KOMO site this morning.
Shoplifting in South Seattle. And Washington does not have the kind of law that in California is encouraging shoplifters.
The most astounding statement made by the KOMO reporter was “We’ll follow up to see if the lack of consequences is really fueling the shoplifting problem.” Well duh!