Policing in Seattle

 

Remember when the duty of law-enforcement was to protect businesses and the public from bad actors? Remember when crimes of destruction and vandalism were rare, and punished when the perpetrators were found, tried, and convicted? Well, those days are gone. The expected riots in Seattle, around Tuesday’s inauguration of the New Regime in the other Washington, happened on Wednesday. Here’s a description of what went down.

Chopper 7 showed a crowd of more than 100 people dressed in all black. By now it’s a familiar, if dreaded, group in downtown Seattle.

The crowd started gathering around 4 p.m. on Wednesday.The group acted as suspected. Some in the crowd smashed up a Starbucks at Pike Pace Market, a major tourist attraction, forcing it to stay closed Thursday. The group of protesters also smashed windows at a bank, a federal court house, and tried to breach a federal building that has offices for ICE agents. They also set fire to an American flag at 2nd and Spring in downtown Seattle. They also ripped off plywood that was covering an Amazon Go store at 5th and Marion. They noticed the glass windows behind the plywood, and busted those too. The store had been targeted before.

And here is a description of what the Seattle Police did, and why. Bolded statements mine.

“It was, by and large, the same crowd we’ve seen in these demonstrations for the better part of the last six plus months now,” said Sgt. Randy Huserik of the Seattle Police Department.

Seattle Police said they can’t do anything until someone starts breaking the law. While responding, their goal is to minimize use of force.

“When we try to withdraw, deescalate, it just seems to embolden them even more,” Huserik said. “Unfortunately with that group, by and large what they’re looking for is a confrontation with the police.”

The Seattle Police Department is also still under federal oversight for excessive use of force. There are also ongoing lawsuits from protesters about police treatment. Investigations and review into the SPD’s crowd dispersal tactics are also ongoing.

So, how long will it be until no business in Seattle can get insurance? If you were an insurance underwriter, would you write a policy for a retail business in Seattle that is almost 100% likely to be vandalized and destroyed by so-called “demonstrators?” The businesses involved don’t have to be located in downtown Seattle or Capitol Hill, the two neighborhoods most affected by the near-constant rioting. Many businesses, including legacy Seattle retailers like Bartell Drugs, have been leaving downtown.

The goal now of Seattle Police is “minimizing use of force”, and no longer protecting the public from destruction. I can’t see how anyone would want to live in a city where there is no law and no law enforcement.

And one last quote from the article.  Bolded phrases mine.

One had a court appearance on Thursday. Prosecutors said 33-year-old Justin Moore admitted to smashing the windows at the Pike Place Market Original Starbucks.

In court, his attorney said he was trying to stop other protesters. Prosecutors asked for a $5,000 bail but King County District Court Judge Lisa Paglisotti released him without bail on personal recognizance. Court documents show he is from the Los Angeles area in California.

Published in Policing
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 17 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    When I was a boy a riot sprang up between our home and where my father was working. Mom had one ear on the television coverage and I, naturally, was captivated and anxious. Looking back on those riots, they were understandable if not justifiable. The politicians today who endanger us and our neighbors with their idiot games to satisfy influential interests deserve to be placed in stocks in the public square. And prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of the law. But there’s a set of stocks nearby that are available for use.

    • #1
  2. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Once a ‘demonstrator’ has illegally entered private property I can’t imagine much force that would be excessive. 

    • #2
  3. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    In Seattle, any force is excessive. 

    • #3
  4. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    TBA (View Comment):

    Once a ‘demonstrator’ has illegally entered private property I can’t imagine much force that would be excessive.

    Talk to the McClosky’s, the couple a prosecutor in St. Louis is still trying to persecute.

    • #4
  5. Captain French Moderator
    Captain French
    @AlFrench

    Much the same thing is happening in Portland.

    • #5
  6. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    I’d say something about the necessity of playing squash, but it might seem rude.

    • #6
  7. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    RushBabe49: So, how long will it be until no business in Seattle can get insurance? If you were an insurance underwriter, would you write a policy for a retail business in Seattle that is almost 100% likely to be vandalized and destroyed by so-called “demonstrators”?

    I’ve always had this question about insurance in general.  Aren’t civil insurrection and war typically exempted from homeowner and business policies?  Hey Flo, what have you got to say about it?

    • #7
  8. GeezerBob Coolidge
    GeezerBob
    @GeezerBob

    And what did the minions of the press report? They burned the flag…

    • #8
  9. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    The local press reported accurately on the broken windows and spray-painting tags that the rioters did.  The local press is not very happy that they ask the city for comment, and get crickets in response.  KOMO’s offices are near the Seattle Center, and I believe their building has had broken windows and vandalism when the rioters get there.

    • #9
  10. Eugene Kriegsmann Member
    Eugene Kriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    You get the government you deserve. If Seattle residents continue to elect buffoons to their city council and mayorship they can expect to see their city destroyed in continually growing increments. I do find it interesting that the two most obviously leftist leaning businesses seem to be the ones that get hit first and most often, Starbucks and Amazon. The left eats its own.

    • #10
  11. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Eugene Kriegsmann (View Comment):

    You get the government you deserve. If Seattle residents continue to elect buffoons to their city council and mayorship they can expect to see their city destroyed in continually growing increments. I do find it interesting that the two most obviously leftist leaning businesses seem to be the ones that get hit first and most often, Starbucks and Amazon. The left eats its own.

    The left talks about being against the wealthy etc, but leftists have been and still are among the wealthiest in the world.

    • #11
  12. Eugene Kriegsmann Member
    Eugene Kriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    kedavis (View Comment):
    The left talks about being against the wealthy etc, but leftists have been and still are among the wealthiest in the world.

    I was thinking about that this morning, and it occurred to me that all of these millionaires, or at least a majority of them, were born into middle class families. They are all nouveau riche. They do not see themselves as oligarchs. In their eyes they are still upstarts, young guys merely playing at being rich guys. With this self-image they are in a sort of denial where they don’t see their wealth as a permanent state. It is all just a game, and as such, they maintain their sense of the terribleness of  inequality, that an underclass exists. They think they are still part of that group fighting for equality and justice. They identify with Antifa and BLM even though none of them would think to joining a demonstration or a riot. They sympathize and empathize at a distance. Hypocrites!

    On the other hand, the members of BLM and Antifa see them as what they are, the enemy to be used and abused as they find appropriate. Of course, those two groups are made up of a bunch of pretenders as well, playing little games, pretending to be revolutionaries. To a large extent the Hollywood lefties can relate since they, too, like playing roles that have no cost to them personally.

    • #12
  13. Michael Powell Inactive
    Michael Powell
    @Michael Powell

    I recently heard someone say that “Seattle is not the happy place it was 20 or 30 years ago. There is an edge there.”

    Seattle has thought of itself as a “utopia” for some time. There was a movie back in the 1960s called The Slender Thread that depicted it as an idyllic college educated and forward thinking place that was daring enough to set up one of the first Crisis Clinics. That movie was also one of the few movies Sidney Portier did during that era that didn’t fixate on race.

    I grew up there and the reality is that Seattle is a social purgatory. Many people are strange, hostile and humorless and those who aren’t are in denial about what the culture there is like. Homelessness has long been part of the culture – most people I knew were at least technically homeless at some point in their youth, even if that mean living in a car or someone’s couch and not on the street. Its home to the most serial killers and suicides in the country.

    The phenomenon of grunge music was Seattle’s most significant cultural contribution and depicted how painful life there is. That was street music created by very unhappy people.  When grunge took off, Seattle was still somewhat of an inward Nordic/Japanese fishing town that still had working class elements but the influx of outsiders attracted to the tech industry that took off at the turn of the century has broken down whatever facades the city had built up. Its truly nasty, ugly side is up for display and the culture up there is not self-aware enough to do anything about it. Seattleites like to get worked up about political issues happening in other parts of the country or the world and just whistle past as their families and neighborhoods fall apart.

    The fate of Seattle, Washington, in my view, is likely to be similar to that of ghost towns that faded away after the Gold Rush. With no actual community or culture, its fate could actually be worse than Detroit, Michigan. Minorities were gentrified out and, soon enough, everyone else will leave too.

    • #13
  14. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    I was born and raised in Seattle, and things started to really decline in the mid-1960s.  “Voluntary” school busing started it, and things went downhill from there.  When I graduated from high school, my school was the best in the city; we always had numerous National Merit scholars.  When I went back for an all-class reunion in the 1980s, the (black, female) principal apologized to us for the lack of National Merit scholars; the building was deteriorating, peeling paint, etc, and looked like a dump.  There began a general lowering of standards everywhere, and the Seattle Public Schools have turned into a nightmare of corruption and dropping-out students.  The city doesn’t pave the streets, and downtown is turning into the ghost town that Portland is.

    • #14
  15. Michael Powell Inactive
    Michael Powell
    @Michael Powell

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    I was born and raised in Seattle, and things started to really decline in the mid-1960s. “Voluntary” school busing started it, and things went downhill from there. When I graduated from high school, my school was the best in the city; we always had numerous National Merit scholars. When I went back for an all-class reunion in the 1980s, the (black, female) principal apologized to us for the lack of National Merit scholars; the building was deteriorating, peeling paint, etc, and looked like a dump. There began a general lowering of standards everywhere, and the Seattle Public Schools have turned into a nightmare of corruption and dropping-out students. The city doesn’t pave the streets, and downtown is turning into the ghost town that Portland is.

    I had a nightmare experience in Seattle Public Schools too – seemed like problems were impossible to avoid. That city was full of the most difficult people I’ve ever encountered, to be honest, like there was no sense of rules to respect or lines that can be crossed.

    • #15
  16. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Michael Powell (View Comment):
    The phenomenon of grunge music was Seattle’s most significant cultural contribution and depicted how painful life there is. That was street music created by very unhappy people.

    Vienna gave us the waltz. Seattle gave us a musician who rode mediocre talent to stratospheric heights until he decided to suck-start a shotgun one day.

    When you’re cultural contributions consist primarily of grunge music and Microsoft’s Clippy, you’re doing it wrong.

    • #16
  17. Eugene Kriegsmann Member
    Eugene Kriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    I was born and raised in Seattle, and things started to really decline in the mid-1960s. “Voluntary” school busing started it, and things went downhill from there. When I graduated from high school, my school was the best in the city; we always had numerous National Merit scholars. When I went back for an all-class reunion in the 1980s, the (black, female) principal apologized to us for the lack of National Merit scholars; the building was deteriorating, peeling paint, etc, and looked like a dump. There began a general lowering of standards everywhere, and the Seattle Public Schools have turned into a nightmare of corruption and dropping-out students. The city doesn’t pave the streets, and downtown is turning into the ghost town that Portland is.

    I started teaching in Seattle in 1969. I taught at Asa Mercer Junior High School. In those days it was a superb school. Then came a series of changes, Magnet Schools program that spent an incredible amount of money on classrooms and materials that were never used was the first. Then bussing which brought our minority population to more than 40% of the school. When that happened the curriculum was changed to adapt to the needs of students who were simply unable to do the work at its former level. Such ideas as any book constituted reading, comic books included. That was the last time they taught Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to 9th graders. The next big change was the introduction of Critical Race Theory through what was then called The Human Relations Task Force. They destroyed the collegiality of the staff by pitting one racial group against another. Each year more minority students, mostly black, entered our program. A friend of mine who was a professor at UCLA told me at the time that statistically any time a school population exceeded 40% minority, specifically Black, you could essentially toss out the program both from the standpoint of academics and discipline. In the years that followed that was proven over and over. When I retired in 2013 my current school was more than 60% minority with the majority of students receiving free or reduced lunch. Academically, the school was a desert, behaviorally, it was a disaster with a principal who demanded that disciplinary referrals be minimized and suspensions nearly eliminated in order to eliminate “disproportionality.” Seattle School which at one time was among the best in the country had been reduced to a cesspool. 

    • #17
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.