The inevitable result of “Defund The Police” – coming soon to a city near you?

 

Seattle was one of the first cities to actively seek to rein in its police force following the George Floyd case and the countrywide riots that followed.  Not only that, but some of its “woke” city councillors openly denigrated its police force and promoted the cause of chaos and anarchy.  As a result, hundreds of officers left the force.

Now we see the inevitable result.

Seattle police’s sexual assault and child abuse unit staff has been so depleted that it stopped assigning to detectives this year new cases with adult victims, according to an internal memo sent to interim police Chief Adrian Diaz in April.

The unit’s sergeant put her staffing crisis in stark terms. 

“The community expects our agency to respond to reports of sexual violence,” Sgt. Pamela St. John wrote, “and at current staffing levels that objective is unattainable.”

. . .

In the memo, St. John went on to say that she was not “able to assign adult sexual assault cases” that came into her unit. Cases involving children and adult cases that had a suspect in custody — a fraction of adult sexual assaults reported to police — were being prioritized. The unit just had too few detectives.

Those concerns bear out in fewer referrals from the sexual assault unit to prosecutors. King County prosecutors say they’ve communicated with the sexual assault unit about understaffing concerns, but little has changed.

Assistant Chief Deanna Nollette in an interview with The Seattle Times and KUOW this week dismissed St. John’s portrayal of what was happening in her unit as “not accurate” and a “gross oversimplification.”

. . .

The staffing crisis at the Seattle Police Department is not new.

The department has been losing officers since the beginning of 2020, and staff levels plummeted to a new low at the end of 2021. Whereas 2020 began with 1,290 officers in service, by March 2022 those numbers dropped to 968 — well below the department’s own projections and what the city expected to spend on salaries.

There’s more at the link.

Of course, the police administrators and the politicians who administer their budget are adamantly denying that there’s a problem.  They ascribe it to poor allocation of resources and the like.  Well, of course they do – they’re the ones ultimately responsible for the problem, but they won’t accept that responsibility and live up to it.  They’d rather blame their subordinates.  They can fire them, after all, and thereby reduce the department’s budget even further.  As long as their positions and salaries are protected, that’s all that matters.

Meanwhile, if your daughter is raped or your son sexually abused in Seattle, good luck getting that crime investigated and the guilty party(ies) tried and convicted.  Isn’t it nice to live in such a “woke” city?

This is almost certainly only the tip of the iceberg in Seattle.  If one police department is so badly affected, what are the other departments like?  Given a 25% reduction in personnel strength, according to the figures cited above, I’m sure every aspect of policing in Seattle is suffering.  I fully expect other “blue” cities to be in similarly straitened circumstances.  The more “blue” the city, the worse it’s likely to be.

If you’re still living in such a city, I can only suggest you move to a safer environment as quickly as you can.  Even if you have to take a drop in salary to do so, I think it’ll be worth it, because what’s coming is going to be hard enough even without the “deep blue” handicap.

(Just don’t move to Uvalde, TX.  Their police department appears to have more than enough problems of its own.)

Peter

8 comments

  1. "dismissed St. John’s portrayal"

    So we can expect at least one more resignation soon.

    I live near (greater than or equal to two hours) this city. The crime hasn't migrated to us but it is coming. The policies set in place by the state (police can't pursue unless they know a crime has been committed, police can't arrest for certain "low level" offenses, etc) as well as the homeless policies (can't make people move their broken down RV if it is their "home") is making even our small town slightly worse. I want out but my retirement needs three more years to fully kick in (COLA adjustments after 20). I am constantly debating in my mind whether it is worth the extra $$ to stick around that long but my family is long lived so it could mean the difference between being comfortable or not when I'm 90. Need to talk to a financial advisor and figure out how much difference it would actually make.

  2. Ray, you talking about the PD? We have a mandate here for teachers but I managed to squeeze out an exemption and it isn't even really discussed any more (for a while I had to pop into the nurse's office every Tuesday morning to be tested but that has gone away now and the nurse was super cool about how idiotic it was).

  3. Remember how upset people were to find out that rape test kits were going untouched and so rape cases were not being prosecuted? Some states had huge multi-year backlogs of handling the kits in their forensic labs.

    Just imagine now that the actual crimes won't even be responded to by the police, so the rape test kits won't even be used.

  4. This is the best video to share with folks living in a red state and thinking about voting for a democrat (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw). If the video doesn't come up look for Seattle is Dying on YouTube. I live in Washington State also 2 hours from Seattle. This State is run by criminals, BLM and the LGBT++ crowd. I cannot wait to get my family out of this hell hole. I am 4.5 years away from retirement. I hope our Country hasn't fallen by then. I don't want to be stuck behind enemy lines.

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