By Steve Pomper
(Left to right) Seattle City Hall, King County Jail, King County Administration Building (Photo: Joe Mabel, Creative Commons)
Well, what do you know? Here we are back in Seattle, my old coppin’ grounds. Though I try to spread the love (and venom—when it’s deserved) around when reporting on national cop stuff, I couldn’t pass this one up because it’s happening in a lot of places.
When this happens anywhere, it gets to me. So, what’s this? City leaders refuse to act decisively and effectively to solve a problem, and then once they finally feel forced to act, they treat it as if they’re saviors solving a problem—that they had a part in creating.
I’ll try not to be too cynical, but if I am, please understand that I couldn’t help myself. This is happening in my backyard. Now, I know I don’t need to go into too much detail about the atrocious way too many in Seattle city government have treated its cops over the years. It’s well known by now.
I don’t intend for any of this to be personal, so I’ll use titles instead of names. However, I will quote others who use their names. And I’ll stick to what police-related policies they have supported, not supported, implemented, not implemented, and why they do or don’t work.
Some of the poor treatment of cops came in the form of anti-police propaganda, forced leftist political indoctrination disguised as police training, and the persecution of officers, some of whom have been fired simply for doing their jobs—or refusing to submit to being recklessly jabbed with an unproven injection they didn’t want or need.
The mayor’s newest actions are suspect only because they come from someone who waited for the political winds to change rather than doing the right thing because it’s the right thing. But they explain a lot about how Seattle and King County work or don’t work.
Here’s the gist: From an article at MyNorthwest.com by our go-to Seattle media guy Jason Rantz, “Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has ordered a Seattle Police Department (SPD) emphasis area covering a large swath of Downtown, Belltown, and the Central District [my old beat]. It is slated to start going into effect this month.
“The roughly 40-block radius, which extends along 3rd Avenue from Yesler through Belltown, will see more visible policing starting this month. And they’ll soon be able to book misdemeanor suspects thanks to contracts being worked out with two local jails that aren’t severely restricting bookings like King County.”
The King County Jail (KCJ) can’t or won’t handle Seattle’s needs in cases where the city is finally allowing the cops to make arrests and book suspects into jail. The ethically-challenged King County Executive (not personal—this is my professional opinion of his professional performance— among many other allegations, he reportedly misused his “elite protection detail” cops and allegedly retaliated against a KC detective. He blames the lack of bookings, at this late date, on “COVID-19 protocols due to, a spokesperson says, a lack of staff.”
So, who’s keeping those long outdated (if they were ever necessary) “protocols” in effect, today? The county exec, right?
However, if you ask King County Corrections union President Dennis Folk, why the restricted bookings at KCJ, he’ll tell you a different story. Rantz wrote, “Folk… alleges they’re being kept understaffed intentionally.
“He exclusively told the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH that county Executive Dow Constantine, since the Black Lives Matter movement, has been purposefully treating criminals as victims, working to close jails and depopulate jails”—the corrections equivalent of defunding the police and de-policing.
Two issues immediately arise. Where will they get enough officers for the mayor’s “emphasis area.” This alludes to deploying additional cops. As I reported at NPA recently, the SPD now has fewer than 425 cops in patrol units for 911 to dispatch. And if that’s the number the city is willing to give us, it’s likely even lower than that.
To put it into context, according to KING 5 News, last year, the mayor said his goal was to get the SPD to 1,400 sworn officers. The closest they’ve gotten to that was in 2017 at 1,315 cops. Rantz, again, from a Jan. 8, 2024 article, wrote that the SPD has lost 610 officers since the BLM/Antifa militia’s 2020 insurrection.
Even I can do the math; that’s close to half the department’s sworn officers since 2017. Again, where will the officers come from to staff the mayor’s plan? This is especially true when the media-muck-covered police chief, not long ago, also announced an “emphasis taskforce,” prompting similar staffing questions. It seems the value is in making the promise, not keeping it.
The mayor could have taken this action at any time since he took office on Jan. 1, 2022, but he didn’t. It’s not like the crime problems (criminals) or solutions (cops) are new. When the council was still majority anti-cop, the mayor didn’t act. And, on his mayoral campaign website, it contains radical leftist nonsense along with several anti-cop comments.
For example, in bold, he declared: “We Can – and Must – Address Structural Racism and Police Bias, Ensuring Public Safety,” joining in the anti-cop mythmaking and myth-peddling.
But Seattleites recently hired some city councilmembers who actually ran on law-and-order. The members remain from one party, but some reason has returned, at least in more members’ positive view of the police.
So, now Hiz Honor, who bought into the BLM DEI/CRT crap, now, instead of “fixing” the supposed “Structural Racism and Police Bias,” suddenly says he wants the police to enforce the law to “ensure public safety.”
Frankly, I never believed this mayor (I knew him as a city councilmember) honestly bought into any of that leftist garbage. It seems he’s just hopping on a new convenient bandwagon. I’ll admit, that’s better than his counterpart in the county has done, embedded with the anti-cop whackos. Still, I’m not sure which is worse, a true believer or someone who repeatedly sticks a finger in the air to check the direction of the partisan wind.
What’s pleasantly unusual about this issue is that, because of King County’s apparently pretending that KCJ can’t handle more prisoners, Seattle officials are reportedly being proactive. They are contracting with two “outside” agencies, the “South Correctional Entity (SCORE Jail) or Issaquah City Jail.
To be fair, the KCJ is likely, truly short-staffed—as most criminal justice agencies are. Understandably, people would not want to work as a corrections officer under such a woke and apparently ethically challenged anti-law-and-order county executive.
Another consideration, which also affects public safety, is that KCJ is located right in the heart of downtown Seattle, adjacent SPD headquarters. SCORE is located 15 miles south of KCJ in Des Moines, which, with Seattle’s I-5 traffic, may as well be in Oregon. The Issaquah Jail is 17 miles east of KCJ, with similar traffic concerns, and it may as well be in Idaho.
I don’t want to slight city leaders who finally seem inclined to do something sensible about the crime problem in this once (and hopefully again) crown jewel of the Pacific Northwest. Hopefully, the adults are finally back in the room (with some radical, anti-cop holdouts still on the council) who will guide this city back to sanity.
To a reality where the cops finally get to do their jobs, the anti-cop myths die, and the city realizes it’s always had a stellar police department and learns to appreciate that fact. The problem is that too many voices are still telling the people too many lies that always coincide with an anti-police narrative. And rather than killing law and order, it’s that lie about the police that needs to die.