By Steve Pomper
Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best did her best, but her best wasn’t good enough for the extremists on the Seattle City Council. Despite her efforts to back the men and women of the Seattle Police Department (SPD), the city council voted 7-1 to implement their plan to defund, and perhaps abolish, the SPD and immediately fire 100 officers.
The vote was seven for, one against, with one abstention. MyNorthwest.com reported, Debora Juarez abstained (she didn’t even show up to vote). Surprisingly, only Kshama Sawant, the shrill socialist revolutionary, voted no. Unsurprisingly, she voted no because she didn’t think the defunding went far enough fast enough.
According to KOMO News, the cuts fall short of what activists—and Sawant—called for, but they are still significant. For example, the council’s plan calls for laying off (firing) 100 police officers. They’re also looking to cut specialty units such as Public Affairs, Mounted (horses), Harbor Patrol, and even SWAT. They also plan to eradicate the Navigation Team, whose mission it was to put homeless folks in touch with social services.
During the run-up to the vote, which the council postponed from last week, the majority managed to steel their leftist resolve despite over 160,000 people who signed a petition opposing defunding the SPD.
As for Chief Best, the city council not only refused to condemn the leftist militants’ attempts to descend on her personal residence (her armed neighbors thwarted their attempt) but also the previous week they had voted to cut the chief’s pay by 40 percent while passing a budget amendment. All of her command staffs’ salaries were to be slashed, as well. In the end, they voted to reduce Chief Best’s pay from $293,000 to $279,000.
What an enormous insult to a leader who, whether or not you agree with all of her decisions, has been in a no-win situation since the city surrendered to the leftist militant insurrection in the infamous “Summer of Love” CHAZ/CHOP zone. FOX News reported, “Best is the city’s first Black police chief and the pay cut would put her salary well below her White predecessor.”
Knowing she could only bang her head against Seattle government’s leftist wall for so long, Chief Best has decided to retire. Well, she’s earned it after nearly 30 years on the department having served in various positions on her way up the ladder. In fact, some years ago, the department promoted her and assigned her as the sergeant of my patrol squad. She’s one of the nicest people I know, and no one in our squad had any complaints about her as our supervisor.
You’ve heard the cliché, no-win situation, but it’s not usually as literal as it is working under Seattle’s ethically corrupt leaders. Chief Best and the SPD have been in a no-win situation for years but particularly over the past several months.
First, the Norm Stamper regime introduces “social justice” to the Seattle Police Department.
Next, social justice indoctrination of the police department shifts into high gear with the “Race and Social Justice Initiative.” Then the Obama/Holder (Durkan) DOJ inflicts a bogus consent decree on the SPD.
Over the years, mayors, city council members, and the city attorney have been methodically eliminating the tools necessary for SPD officers to do their jobs. And now the City Council refuses to even collaborate with the Chief Best, Mayor Durkan, the Seattle Police Officers Guild (officers and sergeants), or the Seattle Police Management Association (lieutenants and captains). You know when Mayor Durkan is a relative voice of reason, the world has tumbled off its axis.
City leaders have been putting every officer at risk by instituting policies of selectively enforcing/not enforcing certain laws against certain people. For a decade, now, Seattle’s city attorney, Pete Holmes, has been enforcing the traffic crime of driving while license suspended 3rd degree according to social justice rather than equal justice. Your race and/or socioeconomic status determines whether you “merit punishment.”
And, it’s only gotten worse (I know; colossal understatement). While just last year, several city council members now calling for defunding the police were, just last year, calling for increases in hiring. Council Member Lisa Herbold, running for reelection in October of 2019, said, “We need to grow the police department by 200 officers.”
Council Member Herbold also emphasized her support for paying lateral (from another agency) officers a $10,000 bonus to uproot and move their families to Seattle. Less than a year later, with nothing local having changed, she is a leader in the effort to defund what she said needed to grow.
Talk to any officer and they will tell you how understaffed the department has been for the past 25 (and longer) years. The population of Seattle has grown to about 750,000 in 2020 from around 493,000 in 1980. That’s an increase of 257,000 (uh, oh. Making me do math puts me in a foul mood).
In 1980 SPD had about 1280 sworn officers. When I was hired in 1992, the SPD had about 1280 sworn officers. Today, with over 250,000 more residents, according to city reports, the SPD has gained only between 45 and 153 officers (depending on which numbers you use). Seattle government uses a pencil (with a large eraser), not a pen, when crunching numbers, so take that with a wink.
Contrast this with the Boston Police Department (BPD). As of 2018, Boston had a population of about 694,000. But the B.P.D. reports 2,150 sworn officers. So, Boston, with a smaller population, has between 717 and 825 more officers than Seattle.
So, Chief Best, with department staffing lagging far behind what it should be, was faced with a council that wanted her to go along with their social justice scheming, which included firing 100 of her officers with more cuts to come in 2021.
But Chief Best keeps in mind what the City Council does not. That reduced staffing equals reduced officer and public safety. So, Chief Best could not go along with them. So, what did the unethical Seattle City Politburo do? They directly (and probably illegally) retaliated against Chief Best by announcing they would be cutting her and her command staffs’ pay almost in half.
If that doesn’t amount to malicious retaliation, I don’t know what does. Now, the question remains, who in their right mind would want to take a job as police chief in Seattle after how the City Council treated the current police chief? No one, is the obvious answer.
So, if no one in their right mind would want to become Seattle’s police chief, what kind of candidates does that leave?