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Seattle's botched experiment with defund the police keeps getting worse
Seattle TimesWhether you think defund the police has some merit to it, or not, it’s becoming clear that no entity in the country has bungled the idea more than the city of Seattle.
We couldn’t even get the meter reader part of it right.
It never made much sense how moving parking enforcement out of the Police Department, and into the roads department, would further social or racial justice. But it was proposed in the hot summer of 2020 anyway, as a way to stick it to the cops by cutting their budget. Along with more meaningful moves, such as moving the 911 dispatch center to a new department to try to shift how many calls are answered by officers with guns.
The City Council initially cut the police budget by about 17%, never reaching the 50% goal. But the agency has been in a tailspin ever since.
More than 400 officers have left while crime has soared. This past week The Seattle Times and KUOW reported new sex assault cases aren’t being investigated because of understaffing. Meanwhile, the softer approaches envisioned for community safety still are in the pilot stages.
This past week the city announced it is refunding 100,000 parking tickets and voiding another 100,000 because of an oversight — namely that the parking enforcement officers, who are civilians, were not regranted the authority to write tickets after they were switched out of the Police Department last fall.
We couldn’t even get the meter reader part of it right.
It never made much sense how moving parking enforcement out of the Police Department, and into the roads department, would further social or racial justice. But it was proposed in the hot summer of 2020 anyway, as a way to stick it to the cops by cutting their budget. Along with more meaningful moves, such as moving the 911 dispatch center to a new department to try to shift how many calls are answered by officers with guns.
The City Council initially cut the police budget by about 17%, never reaching the 50% goal. But the agency has been in a tailspin ever since.
More than 400 officers have left while crime has soared. This past week The Seattle Times and KUOW reported new sex assault cases aren’t being investigated because of understaffing. Meanwhile, the softer approaches envisioned for community safety still are in the pilot stages.
This past week the city announced it is refunding 100,000 parking tickets and voiding another 100,000 because of an oversight — namely that the parking enforcement officers, who are civilians, were not regranted the authority to write tickets after they were switched out of the Police Department last fall.
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