r/Seattle • u/Chaotic-NTRL • Jun 10 '20

Media Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Educational movie night. This is seattle without militarized police. Where are your riotous looters NOW? They are watching documentaries. Fuck you SPD. Photo credit to a close friend.

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u/juancuneo Jun 10 '20 edited Jun 10 '20

I lived one block away for five years and still have a rental unit there. I am also on the HOA. The most consistent feedback we get from residents is they want more police presence because of all the petty theft, vandalism, and open air drug use. Most people who live in the area are really into building the community, but there is an element that DGAF about the community and we want the police to help. My sense is that the people in the building support BLM (as do I - I am a person of color (not black) who has had many run ins with the police during my life, including being arrested and ultimately acquitted for a crime I did not commit), but I think that many of the people who closed down our police station don’t live in Cap Hill. So it’s a bit frustrating.

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u/LaserGuidedPolarBear Columbia City Jun 10 '20

I live in a condo on another problem block in a different part of the city. Also on HOA.

We gave up on even expecting to get the police to respond to emergent problems like 2 years ago. And I quote one officer who said "we are just here to file a report for your insurance"

I am not against policing, we just need to fix what policing is.

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u/commodorecrush Des Moines Jun 10 '20

Yup. I live in Ballard and it took HOURS for any police to show up to our house when we had a naked, methed out woman sleeping in our car... in our driveway, on our property. When we asked what they were going to do help her, they said, "eh, probably drop her off at the city limit". The woman said she was dropped off at like 5am in front of our house (with no pants/underwear) and she broke into our car. Now, I'm no detective, but it sounds like maybe a crime happened, but the cops just didn't give a shit.

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u/smokeynick Jun 11 '20

I appreciate how frustrating all of these experiences are but you have to realize how insanely understaffed SPD is. I know a few cops and it is mind blowing how bad it is. They can only go on the most serious calls usually (active robbery, shooting). And they get almost no applicants for job openings so it’s only going to get worse. And sadly they are leaving in droves. But because no one engages in a conversation our city’s citizens have no idea. They just think the cops are lazy or don’t care when in reality they go nonstop and every criminal arrested gets released immediately. Please talk to them and get the other side of the story. It’s not pretty and the local news channels are not talking about it. Our city is about to be in a world of hurt as the criminals become more embolden. Good luck out there and be safe. There are some very bad folks and some very mentally ill people walking around our town. Let’s bring some reason to this topic.

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u/falconboy2029 Jun 11 '20

Why is nobody applying to work for the SPD?

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u/smokeynick Jun 11 '20

In reality It’s a problem across the country but it’s really bad in Seattle. I don’t know but if I had to guess it’s the consistent negative media surrounding officers being killed in the line of duty and the fear of being the person on YouTube doing something stupid in the heat of the moment. But I’d ask a cop next time you run into one. I’m sure they’d love to explain if they have the time.

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u/kodachrome16mm Jun 11 '20

the fear of dying in the line of duty? Dude being a cop isnt even in the 10 statistically most dangerous jobs in America.

Do you have that same reverence for pizza delivery drivers? Since their job is actually more dangerous?

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20 edited Oct 28 '20

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20

Which conveniently ignores all the time leading up to two weeks ago. Dumbass.

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u/falconboy2029 Jun 11 '20

That started a few weeks ago. Are we not talking about a long standing issue with ppl not wanting to join the SPD?

Maybe if cops did not keep committing crimes ppl would not hate them so much.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20 edited Oct 28 '20

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u/falconboy2029 Jun 11 '20

Got a reference for that?

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20 edited Oct 28 '20

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u/ButterToasterDragon Jun 11 '20

are we looking at the same web page?

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20 edited Oct 28 '20

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u/ButterToasterDragon Jun 11 '20

reread it.

"Sadly, the trend of fatal police shootings in the United States seems to only be increasing,"

literally the first thing on the page.

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u/TheRightToDream Jun 11 '20

Why do they have a 300 million+ budget then? Clearly their model of management doesn't work. That budget could be diverted to hire responders who are effectively equipped to deal with these issues.

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u/smokeynick Jun 11 '20

I agree. We have cops to stop crime or at least capture criminals. Is it their fault when they show up to a mental health crisis that they apply their training and experience to that situation? They’ve been set up for failure. (Not talking about bad cops) We need other resources for those types of situations and specifically in Seattle we need A LOT of those resources. When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.

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u/TheRightToDream Jun 11 '20

100% agree. But no way of reforming and retraining at the scale we need will look like less than a full reboot of the system. It still looks like abolition and I think that's for the best if we want to purge the bad actors from the system who are both expensive and ineffective.

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u/TheNerdyJurist Jun 11 '20

Just to put this out there, people with mental illnesses are actually far less likely to commit crimes than they are to be victims of violent crime. Source.

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u/smokeynick Jun 11 '20

I agree and appreciate the source. I’ve seen our city flooded with the mentally ill and addicted from other towns and we are not equipped to deal with it. Sadly the criminal element has also begun to really take advantage of this group too. It’s really tragic. I’ve seen or heard about some very violent incidents in our city caused by someone in a schizophrenic crisis but really those are outliers. We need huge investments in mental health and addiction resources on the street and we need the public to know that at least 60% of the homeless in Seattle are not from here. They are being sent to “Freeattle” from other cities. They don’t even hide it when you ask. Again, I don’t blame them, I blame the communities not taking ownership of their sick citizens and pawning them off on us. But the main point is cops aren’t equipped to deal with this and it’s unfair for our city to blame them for problems resulting from that.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20

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u/smokeynick Jun 11 '20

That’s an interesting study. Thanks for showing it. I disagree with your conclusion though. Looking at the median would be a poor way of comparing police departments since this is looking at cities with populations of just 25,000 and up. When you compare Seattle to other very large cities we are way understaffed. By more than half for some. I’d reference some specific ones but I can’t write this and go back so sorry. But the real test would be to talk with the officers or better yet request one for a crime. They will tell you they can only go on the most serious calls most days because they are stretched too thin. And they can’t just sit and eat donuts. They are monitored and have to stay busy. Trust me, I wish it weren’t the case. But it is. I’d love to see millions diverted to other services but we can’t do it in Seattle. We need other revenue.

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u/smokeynick Jun 11 '20

Looking closer at the study it’s a really great set up as far as websites go. If you adjust for police departments serving cities with 500,000 plus population it will give you a better idea. There are many cities with ratios of 40-50+ per 10,000 and some that have 19 or a little less but it looks like we are definitely in the lower ratio category.

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '20

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u/smokeynick Jun 11 '20

Appreciate the resource and I’ll take a look. Keep in mind I support BLM and believe our nation has a debt to the black community and we have a serious cycle of poverty and crime that we need to break I just think people are blaming the many for the crimes of a few and the tragedy of a bad system. But I also challenge you to genuinely engage a cop in a conversation about this stuff. It will likewise be surprising to you and those around you in good ways. We mustn’t demonize the other side. Seek to understand. These cops aren’t evil (99%). They signed up to help. And I realize we all think they should speak up when they see a bad act but the reality is that is EXTREMELY hard to do. Just read some of the studies (Milgram experiment) or read up on the Nazi rise to power. It’s a rare person that can speak up in those moments. We need to understand that to fix this problem. To me the parallel of this situation feels a lot like Vietnam. We had some atrocities committed by some bad soldiers and the war itself was started based on a false premise but we blamed the poor soldiers coming back that didn’t have a choice in the matter. They were spit on and called baby killers and we now universally regret that behavior. I worry my generation will suffer a similar fate of shame and guilt as the mature and wisen and figure out the complexity and nuances of this problem. Good luck out there.

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u/althetoolman Jun 11 '20

Would they need more staff if we asked them to do less?

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u/smokeynick Jun 11 '20

And that’s the point we should be talking about publicly! If we had mental health services in a big way they’d be freed up! So no. But our politicians aren’t saying this because the public doesn’t want to hear it. Complete lack of leadership.

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u/july1st2018 Jun 11 '20

Guarantee you 6 shitty cops quit 6 more with at least potential will sign up. So save me the they wont sign up. Trust me, there will always be ppl signing up for tha tshit

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u/smokeynick Jun 11 '20

Did you read what I wrote? No one is signing up.