A triple homicide last weekend put a coda on 45 days of relative peace, but the city remains on track to realize its lowest violent crime rate in years.
As a relatively new (8 year) resident of downtown Seattle, I am at a loss to understand what drives our negotiations with the Police union; I also do not understand the goals or outcomes expected for the Seattle U's perennial "meet your local precinct"program. Can you shed light on either of these questions.
That's a good question. I think it's hard to understand the relationship between the City and the police guild if you're thinking of it in traditional democratic terms, i.e., that the police work for "us," the general public.
It makes much more sense if you conceive of the police as a publicly funded security force primarily serving private interests, like commercial real estate, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Downtown Seattle Association. Those same interests control the levers of politics, including the Mayor, the City Council president, and almost all of the council itself. The Downtown Seattle Association and various feudal real estate barons are also major players in the police foundations (Clise Properties, Michael Malone, Suzie Burke).
That's why you see more and more police resources flowing downtown, one of the few areas with dropping response times. The emphasis is on public order more than public safety, so "quality-of-life" crimes like loitering, public drug use, etc. that impact property values. The Mayor & Co. aren't trying to appease SPOG in contract negotiations to appeal to the general public directly, simply because it's politically popular to hire more cops. They're trying to satisfy their wealthy backers who fund their elections by providing them more services and "cleaning up" downtown.
Even if violent crime is going down, hiring cops will always be a priority because they always need cops to execute sweeps, bust shoplifters, ticket and arrest public drug users. The SeattleU stuff is just a consent manufacturing operation for the rest of this. SPD pays Jackie Helfgott generously to do a form of sham grassroots civic engagement and push polling designed to create the false impression that the public is universally on board with all of this.
As a relatively new (8 year) resident of downtown Seattle, I am at a loss to understand what drives our negotiations with the Police union; I also do not understand the goals or outcomes expected for the Seattle U's perennial "meet your local precinct"program. Can you shed light on either of these questions.
That's a good question. I think it's hard to understand the relationship between the City and the police guild if you're thinking of it in traditional democratic terms, i.e., that the police work for "us," the general public.
It makes much more sense if you conceive of the police as a publicly funded security force primarily serving private interests, like commercial real estate, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Downtown Seattle Association. Those same interests control the levers of politics, including the Mayor, the City Council president, and almost all of the council itself. The Downtown Seattle Association and various feudal real estate barons are also major players in the police foundations (Clise Properties, Michael Malone, Suzie Burke).
That's why you see more and more police resources flowing downtown, one of the few areas with dropping response times. The emphasis is on public order more than public safety, so "quality-of-life" crimes like loitering, public drug use, etc. that impact property values. The Mayor & Co. aren't trying to appease SPOG in contract negotiations to appeal to the general public directly, simply because it's politically popular to hire more cops. They're trying to satisfy their wealthy backers who fund their elections by providing them more services and "cleaning up" downtown.
Even if violent crime is going down, hiring cops will always be a priority because they always need cops to execute sweeps, bust shoplifters, ticket and arrest public drug users. The SeattleU stuff is just a consent manufacturing operation for the rest of this. SPD pays Jackie Helfgott generously to do a form of sham grassroots civic engagement and push polling designed to create the false impression that the public is universally on board with all of this.