Amazon shuts small Seattle office after spate of crimes in area
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Just a month ago an engineer at AWS, a young Asian woman, had her skull cracked open when a random assailant hit her in the head with a baseball bat completely unprovoked. This was in the same neighborhood by the way.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10492101/Moment-hom...
The assailant had 26 offenses on his rap sheet, another graduate of our "catch and release" program of combating crime. This story was buried in the media rather than creating the widespread outrage it deserved.
The amount of social disorder this city tolerates is untenable. It was once a beautiful city that in the span of a few years was destroyed under the watch of a small crew of activist politicians. Many stores have closed because it's become too dangerous for the employees. The whole situation is very sad.
Yet the city squanders resources and prides itself on absolute nonsense like making plastic grocery sacks and straws illegal while the amount of trash on our streets or in our parks continues to increase. I'm not just referring to general litter either, we're talking syringes, feces, and toxic waste from derelict RVs that are allowed to park wherever they wish without fear of reprisal.
The last five years have been consistently hell. Nobody wanted to do anything that will actually help people in the city; just things that allow them to humble brag on Facebook.
Seattle is dead.
Greed and money are always the answers to these pseudo-righteous questions. Greed and money.
Also happy when people like the GP leave this place altogether.
Moreover; whether youre talking about Detroit, London, NY, Baltimore, SF, Seattle, Dubai - _whatever_ - claiming a place where millions of real people live their lives is "dead" or a "shithole" or whatever, is an entirely graceless act. Nobody is forcing you to live here, move on with your life, or I'm going to assume you have some sort of weird insecurity that causes you to do behave this way. Presumably that is why the GP created an account just to make this claim; they didn't want it associated with their other internet identities.
I bet you do. Since you love the city so much, but can’t be bothered to live there.
When people refer to cities it tends to include the immediately surrounding suburbs and exurbs, but honestly I shouldn’t have to explain this to you. Just because you don’t live in shoreline or Renton or whatever doesn’t make you special at all. Have a nice life.
Would the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights?
https://www.historylink.org/file/1287
I heard of it.
Although "a highly desirable city" isn't the most accurate description of Portland either. It's more like a theme park for white people with waxed mustaches.
I’m curious what you think of those areas specifically.
I have to think Covid exacerbated business closures and mental health issues for poor / homeless folks, due to fewer in-person services, etc. Can't think of any city in America that wasn't similarly affected.
It's also interesting how much impact a single movie had on mental health treatment in the us.
I'm not sure about the homeless issues there, though I do know some of their affordable housing laws are counterproductive:
https://twitter.com/amyliztweets/status/1501645850707054593
By shuttered do you mean fully closed? That happened to SF because it has so many office workers who don't live there, but it's worse because it takes years to get approval to open a replacement business there anyway.
If it's either covid or safety it'll come back soon - bad neighborhoods attract first wave gentrifiers.
Same thing can be said about 23rd street. Maybe you have your own personal fears but the two areas you called out are not nearly as shuttered as they were at the peak of pandemic / protests, or when compared to downtown. Also, people seem to be totally comfortable enjoying those two areas. Not sure if you’ve noticed but on sunny days you cannot keep people from congregating in the pearl and around 21st / 23rd ave.
There needs to be a new Law of the Internet that describes this situation.
"When there's little outrage over a hate crime, the probability of the perpetrator being non-White approaches 1."
Something like Coulter's Law [0].
Why did you assume this was a hate crime?
I remember Seattle from the late 70s (as a preschooler), the 80s, and the 90s. I even worked at 3rd and Pine McDonald’s in 1994, and it was pretty bad back then, except the retail and office crowd kept things from getting bad until about 7PM each night (I often closed). The new thing now is (a) laws not enforced at all and (b) downtown was completely drained of office workers. Both of those can be fixed.
Will be solved? Lol. Not in the next twenty years, if ever.
90% of the population gives each other reach arounds for banning plastic straws and calling people living on the streets “unhoused neighbors”
They could do something useful, but damn, doing nothing and bragging about it feels sooooooo good.
"Reaching out" and "being compassionate" won't work, because it does nothing to solve the underlying problem (poverty and exclusion). In fact, it just comes off as condescending (which it is). "Getting tough on crime" only accelerates the decline because now you're declaring war on the underclass. Now they REALLY have nothing to lose, and are fighting for survival.
And so you watch in horror as your once beautiful city goes into decline, feeling powerless to do anything. The left pushes for more leniency, the right pushes for more punishment, and the whole city goes to shit while everyone ignores the elephant in the room.
Some sort of federal solution really is needed, or our cities could be in huge trouble.
Half of the country thinks that doing those things will literally destroy the country. The other half is willing to compromise with the first half. The same folks who preach no compromise, and tend to own more than one gun apiece.
Not holding my breath here.
This is not normal.
it's a pretty idiotic trend in recent years to reduce every societal problem to a income, wealth or other types of inequalities. there are societal problems that are completely and utterly caused by different issues, and this is one of them.
this is the difference to the US. poor people in the US do not see that things are getting better for them.
also in china, everyone, even the poorest have access to affordable healthcare.
most poor people in china do not live in cities but outside where they have land to sustain themselves, so while their life may be poor for our standards, it is nothing like the experience of poor people in the US.
china values social stability first and foremost and works to keep it that way while in the US poor people are blamed for their own condition, like they should just work harder to get out of poverty, little is done to actually enable them to do so.
so no, china is absolutely not more unequal. much less so. there are poor areas and richer areas, but within each area everyone is pretty much equal.
Saying “look at their rates of violent crime” overlooks how the Chinese government _very heavily_ cracks down on dissent or violent offenders in the general case, usually by shooting everyone indiscriminately or making a public example out of them.
Anecdotally, I’ve been at a Chinese bar when a fight broke out. People tried resolving it quickly, before the police found out. If a situation escalates enough, a whole truck of police show up and beat everyone there, including bystanders, for not “keeping the peace”.
Hm. I am myself not from Russia exactly but from 90s Baltics and I personally remember repeated occasions I had to do end up in fights with local “trash”.
Once that ended with a guy punching one of the girls from our crowd in the face because she was being too outspoken about him trying to incite a fight with one of us. To be fair we should have expected that but none of us had any time to react.
To be clear that is actually quite a normal thing. Well, at least at the time it was and the area I lived in was not one of those incredibly poor areas. Russia has way worse places.
So yeah, we never reported that because truth to be told it was very usual and the whole general philosophy is to endure or to fight back yourself and not go to the police. So I would not think this stuff ends up in statistics.
What ends up in the stats is all of the really bad stuff like rape and killings at the same time. I would not even expect any medium-hard definition of “rape” would be reported on a regular basis let alone someone getting punched in their face.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/coronavirus-ne...
e.g. Aggressive panhandling, tent cities, traffic infractions, public transit fare evasion, shoplifting (<$1k), etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
this sounds like pearl clutching and not wanting to think more about an issue with tons of variables.
Further, the US legal system (and US society) heavily stigmatizes “offenders”. Once a person is down its extremely hard to get back up, and people need money survive.
Not saying that violence is ok, but in many cases people just need help instead of punishment.
Here in CA/SF the current policy is to simply ignore low-level crime (which funds their drug addiction aka "to survive")... instead let's take people off the street (and take them off drugs).
More will probably kill themselves, though.
Or perhaps it's a city thing. How does this compare to other cities?
Broadly speaking I love Washington. I think the people are nice, I think the state is beautiful, I think the towns are generally clean. The experience that I hear Seattleites talk about is not in any way representative of what I see in the rest of the state. And that's crazy to me. It's like Seattle is its own little world, completely insulated from the outside.
The corner by McDonalds on 3rd has always been bad, and truly these days it is worse. I was recently down that way and was pretty shocked. But that also isn't most of Seattle these days.
Seattle may not be quite as bad as “dead”, but many of the descriptions are accurate *for a given neighborhood* — there far more crappy areas these days than there used to be.
I have hope it’ll get better one day. It’s a lovely place most of the time.
I have noticed that there are a lot of policies that seem local but are actual not and are being resold/implemented. I'm really curious what's changed and why are we still digging a hole in this spot where it is clearly not working.
The city and province are now spending incredible amounts of money on homelessness saying this will solve the problem but crime is going in the other direction. Some stats are saying otherwise, but reporting is now way down. I was in a parking lot last week downtown and a guy was all messed up and had a fire going in the parking lot. I talked to the security guy he shrugged. When I came back the fire was out, but he was still doing his drug dance. I don't think there was any reporting. I think the security approach was to get the fire out and no other confrontation. The stairwell was full of feces, urine, cat litter, and garbage. I don't think that the parking company can keep up anymore.
There seems to be a sense that criminality is ok for those that want to be criminals. I fully get the idea of not criminalizing poverty or addiction, but it is going well beyond the self and creating an ever larger blast radius. A real debate about whose freedoms get protected and whose get run over would be interesting to watch by policy makers. Not sure how they are seeing this, they are as another person mentioned in the Orwellian mode so it isn't decipherable.
Is it city and policing policy? Is it the drugs are just too strong and people are beyond help or being expected to have any agency? I really don't understand why this is going on in this direction? I think that politicians are are tied in their own knot and don't know a way out.
[0] - https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/local-news/robbed-vandali... [1] - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-ch...
I have a friend that lives at Main and Keefer and we hangout on the patio and people watch. It is clear that there are people that are really locked into a major mental illness whether it is schizophrenia or something else. They are being given a place to stay and a meal, which I think is important, but they are left to figure out the rest on the streets. They look like prey for dealers. Once someone is mixing drugs with their illness it gets really messy and anit-social.
I've grown up in and around Vancouver. I've never felt that it was dangerous. I'm somewhat regularly down at Hastings and Main and not fearful. Like you mentioned people yelling etc. But business owners are taking it on the chin pretty hard with theft, vandalism and loss of customers.
I love Chinatown, but it is definitely at a low right now. I take my daughter, I don't want her to be intimidated and when it does come back I want her there. It is a great part of the city. It should be thriving.
I was strongly considering Seattle, but it looks like LA 2.0
Out of control homelessness, lax criminal enforcement, sky rocking rents.
Everyone is liberal until you step in human waste. It appears in Red States they don’t play these games.
Even in California, Orange County won’t just let you put up a tent
We do spend a lot of money on combating homelessness already, so I get the frustration from those who question throwing good money after bad. My short answer is that Democrats aren’t actual leftists, so they (claim to) want a bunch of progressive social policies but never pass anything that could actually reduce inequality since they’re just as beholden to the wealthy/corporations as Republicans are.
Here’s my laundry list of things politicians could do instead of letting tents fester on sidewalks:
- axe the whole health insurance industry.
- bring back institutionalization for the guy waving a machete on the bus, and provide wrap-around outpatient treatment for the more stable.
- in cities, build dense, massive public housing for all (not only for the poor) to flood the market with supply and drop prices. Some of these could be rented out on a subsidized basis or provided as welfare, with the rest owner-occupied. The US once subsidized a massive expansion of single-family homes for the middle class. We could do this for affordably-priced condos in big cities, keeping the American tradition of building equity though home ownership.
- for those who reject this new social safety net and pose harm to society, turn our prison system from a sick joke into something that actually rehabilitates people for life in the outside world.
- Tax big corporations to pay for all of it.
Of course, none of this will ever happen in the US, and instead Seattle can remain a city of million dollar homes with meaningless “in this house we believe” signs in the lawn and tent cities down the street that the latest law-and-order mayor can push to another neighborhood every few months.
Most people who are engaged in criminal behaviour do not "want to commit crime". They are put into an environment that makes crime seem worth it.
So, how to civilise the US:
1. Raise emphasis and funding on schools and education.
2. Have a mandatory year of service (may be conscription/may be US peace corps) to build a sense of belonging and society - for everyone. Mix people randomly.
3. Legalise most (all?) substances - and make purchasing them safe and easy. Defund crime cartels, also eliminate a lot of associated crime. Maybe extend that to other areas which traditionally support organised crime (looking at you, prostitution)
4. Crack down on glorifying violent behaviour in media. Think movies, games, but also gangster rap here. Underprivileged early-teen kid keeps listening about some guy who wears gold chains, caps some other folks and gets all the girls? No wonder he's going to be interested in signing up for the next gang.
5. Enact some meaningful social reforms to lower the Gini coefficient. This starts with an universal healthcare system, but does not end with housing.
6. Reestablish a system of psychiatric clinics. Many people who are in prison should actually be in a psychiatry.
7. Lower the prison population - prisons are universities for crime. If you are in prison in the US, you'll eventually become part of a prison gang, guess what: that's for life - when you and your friend are out, you're not going to build a cabin in Alaska, you're going to do crime. Less people in prison means less networking and less follow-up crime.
8. Make plea bargains illegal. They are extortion tactics that make people admit to stuff they may not even have done. If an attorney is certain he can nail you down, he won't use them anyways.
9. Stop electing state attorneys, sheriffs or judges - make them public officials with a standard paycheque and a minimum education level in law.
10. Law Enforcement Officers should have a three-year apprentice period where they learn about deescalation, proper firearm techniques, the law and criminology.
11. Change the prison system to focus on reintegration into society instead of punishment.
12. Start meaningful programs to lower gun ownership, especially in inner city environments.
13. Take powers away from town councils and move it to the state or federal level - this includes tax collection and spending. Doing so, you will avoid NIMBYist decisions that defunds the places of undesirables, making their areas even less desirable.
14. Avoid gerrymandering by using a fairer, ideally mathematical method to assign districts.
15. career politicians are now banned from having sources of income outside their activity as a politician (some leeway can be made for family-run businesses they have owned prior to getting elected). No politician will earn more than the median of the constituents they represent. Punishment for overstepping this or corruption will be harsh.
The US is obviously following the wrong path. To get back to normal standards, it should be obvious they need something different, not more of the same.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/crime-rat...
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Unreported crime is extremely common in the USA.
I haven't lived in Sweden, but I've lived somewhere lower on that ranking. Day to day life here feels much, much safer than in the USA (where I lived for years). In this country the idea of not reporting a violent crime is unthinkable.
Not so in the USA. If anything, it's the default.
> How else would you create a comparable metric for the occurrence of crime by country?
It may not be possible, but I'd probably try to look at how much crime actually happens rather than what finds its way into police records.
Also, if we take the idea of "general feeling of safety" into account ... do you really think you'd feel safer in Colombia, or Somalia, than the US? Many of the countries above the States in crime per capita have law enforcement systems that are even more corrupt, and even less likely to give good statistics - if the numbers of the US are cooked in that overview, chances are so are everyone elses.
Hence my statement: there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
> Your argument seems to boil down to... <strawman>
Not at all.
https://bra.se/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics/inte...
Is that based on an apples-to-apples demographics profile?
Post-pandemic the lack of office workers in the area due to pandemic meant the pedestrians in the area changed demographics significantly recently.
Well, there's some other sketchy parts, but it'd be a shame if the whole city felt as sketchy as 3rd and Pine.
Tacoma is now being called Tacompton. It’s that bad.
Just as a note, small government also means less police, and less money in policing. Chiefs in California and many major cities make over 1 million a year.
Police are largely responders to violent crime. Theyre not there to prevent it. The various laws and beliefs prevent individuals from defending themselves.
Police in major cities are a big political token. The city depends on policing to make money and retain power. They're not acab, or defund the police. Those are typically what you see on Twitter profiles not on city councils.
It's also good to compare to our neighbors south of us rather than across the ocean - we have a lot in common with them too and too often forget that.
Prisons overwhelmingly are not a punishment, they're a hiring event. An expectation of life even. That doesn't stop the crime. A good way to stop a violent crime is for us to bring power back to the individual with strong self defense protections.
Police prevent crimes, violent and not, by two mechanisms. First, by increasing the probability that offenders will be punished. A potential offender who thinks they are going to be caught and punished will be less likely to offend - and the police are a part of that system. Second, by imprisoning people who have offended the police limit the extent to which those people can commit subsequent crimes against the general population by incarcerating the offender for a substantial length of time.
Small government may, in some cases, mean less policing. That seems like a non-sequitur though. People who think Seattle has a crime problem (I am one) aren't calling for smaller government. We are calling for law enforcement.
1 - https://www.wsj.com/articles/seattle-city-council-defunds-th...
Here is a better article that doesn’t require a subscription to read:
https://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-police-budget-shrink...
Your article mentions that the council says "there are no cuts functionally for SPD". So, on the one hand, we have the steadily declining raw number, and, on the other hand, we have the preferred phrasing of some politicians. To me, the number seems more significant.
That they’ve been losing people for three years is the problem.
I suspect a contributing reason to SPD losing and not being able to recruit people is the openly hostile attitude of city leadership towards law enforcement. Ineffective criminal justice in the city likely contributes as well.
Second, if you haven’t noticed, everyone is having trouble hiring right now. The negative vibes for the job are definitely significant, but this is also part of a more broad labor shortage.
https://twitter.com/search?q=defund%20(from%3Acmkshama)&src=...
For those who have never heard of the Hilltop shootout:
https://www.military.com/history/time-army-rangers-got-gunfi...
The majority of these serious crimes are committed by people with extensive wrap sheets. We should go back to using the criminal justice system to incarcerate people who are a danger to society. In the large city I live, we have a county attorney who is more concerned with "social justice" than keeping the population safe. Even in the past year, he said his office would no longer prosecute felonies where the suspect was apprehended through minor traffic violations (with the exception of some major crimes). In my mind we have some institutional rot or mind virus, that has stopped part of our justice system from keeping people safe.
I'm not sure it's so cut and dry. This reasoning has always irked me because the question I have is why are social reform progressives so successful in piercing through the ranks of DAs and other attorneys, but no where else?
In California, at least, what it seems to me is that there is a reluctance to send people to prisons because they are at or over capacity (some at 200% capacity) and there is no appetite to build more. Ignoring all the social pushback you will get (why are building more prisons than schools/hospitals/homes), given California real estate, it's probably also very expensive. I'm not sure it's 100% a coincidence that all these cities with "catch & release" programs are also cities where the real estate prices are the highest.
I mean Seattle is "progressive" but we let all these homeless people live on the streets! If we are so progressive then why do we not provide and force them into housing (or mental wards or anything)? Why do we not have an income tax?! This state makes no sense but I am stuck here because my kids are in high school.
The frequent response is "You can't translate them to X because the situations/demographics etc are incomparable". Tet similar objections are less often if ever raised about emulating the policies of tiny Scandinavian countries that are mostly white.
Because their politics are seen as "correct" by the media and academia, and the policymakers they create and indoctrinate. It's deliberately willfully ignorant of potential solutions because the solutions are provided by people whose policies are seen as "incorrect" (and in liberal/progressive circles, this often is reduced to "evil").