seattle jenny durkan mayor
(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan will propose $20 million in cuts to the police budget in the remainder of 2020, the most of any department as the city attempts to fill a hole of about $400 million caused by the coronavirus.

Durkan proposes slashing about 5% of the Seattle Police budget this year with an officer hiring freeze until a new plan is developed “reflecting community priorities for public safety,” The Seattle Times reported. Many of the protests that have dominated Seattle for weeks have demanded a 50% cut to the police department’s budget as a key goal. Durkan has asked the department to prepare models of what 20%, 30% and 50% budget cuts would look like.

Also on Tuesday police were investigating the third shooting incident near a neighborhood protest zone in Seattle that has been occupied since a police station was largely abandoned after clashes with demonstrators over a week ago.

Durkan said Monday the city would move to wind down the protest zone following the shootings that have distracted from changes sought by thousands of peaceful protesters opposing racial inequity and police brutality.

Early Tuesday, the latest shooting left a man in his 30s wounded in the Capitol Hill neighborhood east of downtown. His injuries were not life-threatening.

A poster calls for the resignation of Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, near an entrance to what has been named the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone in Seattle, Monday, June 15, 2020. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Lorenzo Anderson, 19, was killed Saturday and the condition of a 33-year-old man shot around the same time was upgraded Monday to satisfactory. A 17-year-old boy was shot in the arm Sunday night near the area. He was treated at a hospital and released.

Police said the latest victim refused to provide any information about the shooting or a suspect description.

Less activity was seen Tuesday on the streets of the protest zone, but a nearby park where people have been camping for weeks remained bustling.

Durkan has said police will soon return to the station where police clashed with protesters following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Protesters cordoned off the several-block area near the East Precinct after riot squads used tear gas, pepper spray and flash-bangs on large crowds of mostly peaceful protesters. The tactics have drawn condemnation from city leaders and a federal court order temporarily halting the use of the weapons on demonstrators.

Police Chief Carmen Best said in a letter Tuesday to the community that the situation requires a complete re-envisioning of safety and the police department’s role in it.

“We have listened for generations, and we will continue to listen,” Best said. “But the time for talk and committees is over. We must act. Together.”

She provided a draft of discussion items such as redesigning the mission of city police to reflect humanization not criminalization; allowing a resident to join the command staff; and working with neighbors to determine which non-violent 911 calls can acceptably be passed to other agencies or turned over to the community.

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89 COMMENTS

  2. Cutting the po-po budget by $20 million is a good idea, but I suggest simultaneously increasing the fire department budget by the same amount. You’re gonna need it, Durkan, when your sh!tty city burns.

    But you can always blame it on white supremacists wearing very convincing blackface.

    • BLM will run their own candidate in the next election and she can kiss her position goodbye. They will deny it and won’t file any of the paperwork required by law, but they are a political party and they are likely getting their own Kristallnacht ready to go for this Fall or perhaps sooner.

      Stay out of the big cities where you have seen protests, the bigger and more blue the worse it will be. This is doubly true after sundown!

      • Re: Kristallnacht. Agreed. It will happen in major cities UNLESS those cities begin to consistently ENFORCE the myriad of laws which they’ve been ignoring specifically to allow protesters to run wild.

      • They mostly come out at night…. mostly.

        Thankfully, I represent rich white guilt suburban Democrats who serve as useful idiots and only enable/fund this sort of activity…. We’re going to ride this Blue Wave to victory in 2020 my friends!!…. Somebody just sent me a meme of me watering a tiny tree labelled “leftism”… there seems to be a rope tied to one of the branches that ends in a noose around my neck… I wonder what that all means?…… wait a minute!!! A noose!?!?!? RACISM!!! I’M A VICTIM OF RACISM!!! I NEED A SAFE SPACE!!!

        Eric Swalwell 2020

    • “…blame it on white supremacists wearing very convincing blackface.”

      So… Ralph Northam and Justin Trudeau, then?

    • Will the police try to recover their budget in on-the-spot fines? Or will the mayor try to grab the fine revenue too?

  3. She also wants to decriminalize loitering for “people of color,” in the cases of prostitution or drug dealing. Every “person of color” that is a h**ker or drug dealer in the country now has an incentive to go to Seattle.

    Get out. Now.

    • “”that is a h**ker”

      Nothing wrong with hooker,that term comes from a infamous general,Fighting Joe Hooker,the women of the camp became known as Hookers

  4. Do it! Let it burn…you voted for this lunaticy. All the good folks of Seattle need to leave. You aren’t protected & your businesses are dying. Mebbe they’re hoping for the next Detroit😕

    • Already gone. Left for Missourah four years back. We knew it was time to go when we got lectured by a drag queen (not coincidentally in one of the drag bars in the center of CHAZ) about how even though we know Clinton was terrible, we HAD to vote for her lest Trump become president.

      Well, Trump became president and they lost their friggin’ minds (feel free to keep that witty comment to yourself) and started attacking everybody. I had a pretty good side business going on with Pink Pistols and Operation Blazing Sword, doing firearms training for several LGBT groups centered in Capital Hill. But as a community, they chucked anybody who didn’t 10000% agree with whatever random liberal thing they just thought of under the nearest bus, set it on fire, and then complained about the smell and lack of transportation in the area.

  5. Reminds me I need to order another case of popcorn so i can enjoy the upcoming civil unrest from afar.

    • If I thought this wasn’t a cancer, I would enjoy watching it burn. Has any lessons been learned from Chicago, Detroit, or Baltimore? No.

      Cutting Police budget now is stupid. Removing laws to arrest the worst criminals is short sighted.

      I worry for myself living in a state that won’t let me carry. If I wasn’t divorced and like 90% of men stuck with the woman having primary custody, I’d move.

      Oh, this is scary.

  6. So, the police are going to return to their burned out station? Who believes that? And no one is going to go in there and do repairs without the police guarding them.

    Pass the popcorn.

      • What’s up between you and James? Did you catch him sleeping with your wife and daughter? Are you stalking him because you secretly want him to be your boyfriend? Did he correct you once and now you’re out for revenge?

        • No. I simply recognize James as a savant with the prose. He has coherent, and never redundant, posts. Unlike that vulgar, sexually confused dunderpate ‘Geoff [insert completely inane pretend middle name] PR’. Ever notice how that dude’s posts always end threads? I wonder why…

      • How about you two getting a room, already?

        Your lips are locked on his shlong so hard the vacuum is stronger than in interstellar space…

  8. Yeah, sure, cut the funding, who needs police when you can have something much much better called anarchy! Another fantastic idea by a democrat in a liberal state. I for sure won’t be visiting there anytime soon.

  9. There are those for whom “Defund” means to remove all funding for and no longer have police departments. Those are the delusional voices dreaming of some sort of imaginary utopia, a thing that has never worked out for any utopian movement. They deserve only to be laughed at, derided and rejected.

    On the other hand police budgets have been climbing for many years. Taking money away and using it to fix training, standards and procedures is a very good idea. Taking money to use for better approaches to certain classifications of problems is a very good idea.

    Stopping the revenge cycle that defines inner city violence is one example. This organization has shown time and time again that it is not the guns or simplistic views on racism, it is behaviors that are communicable, that establish cycles or revenge between inner city gangs. Fund these this organization and applying their science based, behavior focused methods to interrupt violence:
    https://cvg.org/
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cure_Violence

    There are other things. On police training, officers must learn from well documented examples how incidents are made worse by the “Warrior Cop” mindset. That there is a difference between legitimately being aware and reacting in self defense to a threat and the needless escalation of minor incidents into violent, brutal or deadly encounters.

    “Qualified Immunity”, an invention of the courts, must be squashed with legislation.

    A “Duty of Care” must be created by legislation and enforced.

    There is much that can be done to correct faults in a practical way, without regard to race, using a small cut off existing police budgets. Skip a few MRAP buys, defund a few SWT teams, suddenly money can be well spent improving the lives of citizens and the police who are supposed to “Protect and Serve”.

    And wouldn’t it be a hoot if the law stated the police had a duty to at least try to “Protect and Serve”? Not to succeed 100% of the time, but always to strive in good faith with professionalism and clear intentions?

    Tossing a flash-bang into a baby’s crib , kneeling on a cuffed prisoner’s neck for 8minutes 46seconds, pumping eight rounds into a sleeping woman’s body as she lay in her own bed, these are clear example of failing to comprehend the lessons needing to be learned about what is wrong in policing today.

    • enuf,

      Is the violent crime that we see in places like Chicago a never-ending cycle of revenge? Or is it the locals meting our justice to a never-ending train of scumbags perpetrating crime on the public?

      It is a serious question.

      • Certainly not 100% of it. A mix of gang turf wars, revenge cycles and drug deal violence would be the big three I think. With the chaos factor of mistaken identity or unintended killing by way of bullets set flyig about with not a care where they may go. In any case Cue Violence has a well documented record of succeess with their behavioral science model.

        There is also a well documented series of examples of Cure Violence being defunded and kicked out of a city because their efforts did not coincide with local politician’s ideas of what should be done or to whom the credit for success or blame for failure should be applied.

        • enuf,

          Even if the root causes that you stated are correct (and I suspect that all three causes which you listed are responsible for 98% of violent crime in cities like Chicago), it is happening right now with current police budgets and staffing levels.

          I am really having a hard time understanding how reducing police budgets and staffing is going to make anything worse when conditions are already horrendous.

          I am also looking at it another way: is there a far more effective solution for the same amount of money that we are throwing away at law enforcement? If there is, let’s get rid of law enforcement.

        • “is there a far more effective solution for the same amount of money that we are throwing away at law enforcement?”

          Yes, and it’s practically free. Promote morality, the nuclear family, and having children after getting married. These are the keys to ending the violence, and having a happy and productive society. It isn’t complicated, and the solution is extremely well documented. Unfortunately, the people in the cities keep voting for democrats who are literally doing the exact opposite.

    • Taking money out of the existing budget and using it to fix training, standards, and procedures would indeed be a very good idea — but I’d be very surprised if anyone actually did that. Money will either be hacked off for COVID recession budget-balancing or, as LA has promised to do, given to social justice organizations that will use it to create more mayhem and agitation.

      • “but I’d be very surprised if anyone actually did that.”

        My thoughts exactly. She’s salivating at being able to increase her budget to help fill up the holes of her incompetence. Bigger budgets = more power. What they need to be doing is defunding the entire government and giving the citizens a refund for such lousy service.

    • That right make cops subject to lawsuits US Tort system rules making sure that police will do their best to do nothing that can get them sued but fix this by making them do things that will get them sued.

  10. Want socialist Seattle manure in your backyard? Stay home, cry about bumpstocks and don’t vote or man up, wipe the snot off your face and vote…

    TRUMP/PENCE 2020.

    • So true Debbie.
      The leftards like to post BS that Trump MUST be rejected in Nov, because of [insert recent 2nd A restriction here].
      It’s the leftard “reject the better choice because it falls short of perfection” retarded logic.
      Look at the other option for a moment, Joe B and the socio-Marxist groups on his bandwagon. A total anti-2nd A (among other rights) shitshow choice.
      The Trump 2020 campaign motto could be, “If you have to take a bite of a shit sandwich, take it from the side with the LEAST shit”.
      Trump/Pence 2020, The “LESS Shitty” side of the Sandwich!
      That’s a motto “The Donald” can ride all the way to a 2nd term.

  11. I have an unshakable hunch: many people are going to be stunned — real soon — to see how rapidly our nation’s bluest large cities devolve into Hellish dystopian nightmares. The fun question will be whether they are stunned at how fast it happens or at how extremely Hellish it becomes.

    The United Kingdom’s Prime Minister in the 1980s — Margaret Thatcher — famously said, “The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” I like to convey the same general principle in a different way, “The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of rational, stable, reliable, and honorable people.”

    Lack of money is a trivial problem compared to a lack of good people.

    • I have no problem believing that mayors would allow this but it’s important to remember that governors have the ultimate power because it is the states that create the cities via incorporation.

      I don’t think any state would actually revoke a city charter but they may well force it to be rewritten.

      And while mayors can be pressed hard by their deep blue constituencies, governors have two problems with allowing this. First, they require support from a broader population and second, even in blue states, they need the votes from the cities. Votes they won’t get from a dystopian hellscape.

      In such a circumstance expect that the National Guard gets used extensively because if things go far enough, no matter how you cut it, there’s no state where the governor doesn’t have a vested interest in taking such action.

      • The vast majority of voters in Washington state are progressive socialist. Or at least lean that way. Nothing is going to happen from the governor. He has the same political orientation. The atheists are getting what they have been asking for.

        “Yet so far the zone appears neither as lawless as conservatives fear nor as autonomous as some of its occupants might like.”

        https://reason.com/2020/06/10/seattle-protesters-establish-autonomous-zone-outside-evacuated-police-precinct/

        I wonder if the Libertarians were also just as “neutral” about the Bundy Ranch. When it first started?

        • My entire analysis is based on the use of the term “Hellish dystopian nightmares”, which I read as “widespread violence and lawlessness”.

          There’s no governor in the country that’s going to allow that in major cities within their State for a prolonged period. They may pussyfoot around about it at first but eventually they’ll do something because they have no other choice.

          Cities vote, votes won’t happen if there’s no real city in play and they’re also massive economic drivers which will cease to function in a “Hellscape”. If absolutely nothing else the governors will take charge because the State’s pocketbook gets hit.

      • “…but it’s important to remember that governors have the ultimate power because it is the states that create the cities via incorporation.”

        Does that apply to a city designated as ‘Home Rule’?

        Such a city can write and amend its own municipal charter…

        • It would depend on how the Home Rule City was created in the first place. Really, this is a can of worms that I’m not going to totally unpack because that’s an actual book.

          Generally speaking, very generally, Home Rule isn’t considered a license to allow anything you want. It provides latitudes but only to a certain point when what’s happening becomes an “emergency” or starts to affect the rest of the state negatively. And you have to remember that Home Rule is revocable insofar as the State allows Home Rule under State Law and/or the Constitution which could theoretically be changed to disallow the practice, revoke the City’s Charter and essentially take it over. I can’t imagine a situation that bad but… it’s theoretically possible.

          For the purpose of illustration I’m gonna stick with Colorado.

          Colorado has certain things it allows and certain things it doesn’t. Denver gets away with more because the real, hard rules for Home Rule were laid down in 1950 (to solve issues arising from Denver) while Denver gets grandfathered powers because it got Home Rule in 1902.

          For the list of what Home Rule covers in terms of what a municipality may do within the jurisdiction of Colorado if the HD City was created after 1950 See here, pg 232: https://law.justia.com/constitution/colorado/cnart20.html#:~:text=No%20municipal%20home%20rule%20charter,the%20time%20of%20its%20incorporation.

          So… for example, I’ll contrast Denver and Broomfield, Colorado both of which have Home Rule.

          Denver’s Home Rule Amendment states “The city and county of Denver shall alone always constitute one judicial district of the state.” (emphasis mine). However, elsewhere it’s stated that “Such charter and the ordinances made pursuant thereto in such matters shall supersede within the territorial limits and other jurisdiction of said city or town any law of the state in conflict therewith. IOW, “We can do what we want just be creating a law that conflicts with yours and within our jurisdiction our law wins”. Again, see above about why Denver, and ONLY Denver can do this. Which is why Boulder can fuck right off with it’s “AWB”/registration scheme.

          You will note however what the combination of these two things means: Denver admits that it’s liable to have this hashed out in State Courts where they may well lose. They’re not claiming that they can just do whatever the Hell they like, but rather, by their own rules they must follow the what is laid down by State courts, which they recognize the jurisdiction of. This is all from 1902.

          Denver didn’t secede from the State and must abide by any laws the State passes which are within the bounds of the State Constitution. So where it’s authorized (essentially everywhere) to *effectively suspend* Home Rule during an “emergency” then the only real question limiting the Governor is “What constitutes a true and proper emergency?” Why? Because Denver doesn’t have a law that says “X isn’t an emergency unless we agree to it”. They would have to create that law and then defend it in court and if the State could make an argument that whatever Denver was doing to create the “emergency” had effects outside of Denver’s jurisdiction then Denver would lose. A true “Hellscape” would qualify as Denver is a major economic driver for the entire state, creating an emergency outside Denver’s jurisdiction which Denver has no right to do and the Governor would be justified in intervening within the City.

          Broomfield OTOH gained Home Rule in 2001. However, Broomfield doesn’t get what Denver gets because Broomfield (by necessity because this is post 1950) includes the statement “The city and county of Broomfield shall have all powers conferred to home rule municipalities and to home rule counties by the constitution and general laws of the state of Colorado that are not inconsistent with the constitutional provisions creating the city and county of Broomfield.

          IOW, if you bother reading the whole thing they basically get to administrate the City, they’ve become their own county (they used to be part of three or so, at least two, Adams and Boulder which was a mess) and generally speaking appoint their own officers and make regulations for piddling things like where telecommunications lines can be placed or how areas can be zoned. They don’t get to claim the ability to nullify State law by creating their own law that conflicts with State laws. Only Denver can do that.

          ======
          Overall, I would posit that allowing a large city to “…devolve into Hellish dystopian nightmares” qualifies as an emergency which the governor could step into in almost every case regardless of the Mayor’s wishes. In reality, what is the City going to do to stop it? At worst the Governor gets kudos from the rest of the state for stopping the emergency and then the state gets reprimanded in court years later.

          All of this is predicated on uncommon’s use of the term “Hellish dystopian nightmares”, that is, anarchy, violence, a cessation of actual commerce, disruption to *safe* travel, widespread arson etc, essentially widespread and general lawlessness. I am unaware of any city in the country which has a situation in which the governor couldn’t intervene when it became clear that the Mayor/City could not or would not control things in a remotely rational manner.

    • The USSR tried to create “The New Soviet Man” who would imbue all the supposed positive attributes of socialism. What they got was “Homo Sovieticus” which was the polar opposite.

  13. Rather defund Marxist chit holes such as Seattle,problem solved for Jenny Durkan and her comrades.

  14. I’d be satisfied if the police, and prosecutors and judges, were subject to the exact same laws I am. You know, so America wouldn’t officially be a police state anymore.

  15. Your answer on why Amazon made HQ2.

    I’ll be curious to see where the cash comes from. Increasing strain on existing staff while probably cutting training budgets is a sure fire way to reduce incidents involving the police and their mass exodus, isn’t it?

  16. My advice for any business in that part of seattle. Salvage what inventory you can, collect any insurance your due and GTFO while you can

  17. Sure, that’s fine. Times are tough. As long as you accept that a police department is going to be 20 million dollars less effective.

    You can deal with that a couple ways. The smart way would be to limit their use. Make it clear that the police aren’t going to do traffic enforcement, for example. Of course when people get run over and killed by reckless and drunk drivers, they get mad. And then they call the mayor. So what usually gets done instead?

    The police are told to do everything they used to do, except with less money. Then you get just the sort of negative police interactions that are being protested. Fewer cops trying to do more is dangerous. But when something goes wrong, will the mayor blame herself?

    Doubt it.

  19. She is an ignoramus. Got the job because she wears “comfortable shoes”.

  20. TTAG has reported.several times about the failure of Seatle’s exorbitant gun tax to raise the promised revenue. Maybe this is a purposeful way to make up for the shortfall. Announce police cuts, gun sales soar, and they make up for Covid shortfalls. Or, they’re so locked to their leftist dogma that they are totally detached from reality.

  21. This is a good thing. It will teach the other areas of the country what Beirut Lebanon was like in the 1970s. Don’t worry. The People of the CHAZ will figure out how to build bombs. Hopefully they will be like the Weather underground. And blow themselves up.

  22. Maybe they’re just trying to create affordable housing by crashing real estate values at the expense of the current owners. Who in their right mind would invest in that place? Either commercial or residential. Not me.

  23. Hopefully She and the City Counsel will get their way. The bigger the Shit Show now. The sooner the good honest hard working citizens will get off their asses. Apathy and the “It Won’t Effect Me” attitude of allowing politicians to reshape society. Into what they see today. Hopefully will leave a bad enough taste in their mouths. They’ll realize what they’ve lost or are about to loose. They ignore what is going on in front of their eyes at their own peril. As a few are now realizing.

    • Exactly. Instead of visiting the zoo from behind a nice steel guardrail, she can live *in* the zoo.

  25. Fuck Seattle, fuck Nurse Durkan, and fuck her gopher Inslee. I left a job south of Seattle tonight and was warned away from I5 northbound as there are protests on it, as there have been for several weeks. They need to get control of their city, it was a shit hole several years ago but they have an obligation to its inhabitants and traffic to act like they give a damn. But, I believe it accomplishes their purpose to let the whole thing go down the toilet. After 35 years in business here I seriously am ready to leave.

  27. We have listened for generations, and we will continue to listen,” Best said. “But the time for talk and committees is over. We must act. Together.”

    It is important that this measure take place. As a white person I feel tremendously guilty for the plight of black people. A black person who rapes is not a rapist he is expressing his emotions. A black person who steals only does so because he has no money at the time. A black person who murders is not a criminal. He does so because he has been forced to by the gun industry. White people are the criminals because we force blacks to take drugs and prevent them from going to school. White people must give up all they have to ensure the rise of the next Shaka Zulu to lead this racist country. We must end the racism of the retail holiday Black Friday by renaming it neutral Friday. We must do more to help black people.

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