The City of Seattle has a shortage of police officers. According to a recent staffing study, the city needs to add 175 police officers to meet 911 response times and other service goals plus the “equivalent of more than 100 officers in overtime.”
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray pledged to hire 200 new officers by 2019. Thus far, the Seattle Police Department has added 50 officers.
Murray’s original plan was to add 100 new officers. The cost of meeting the city’s needs by doubling the original figure is expected to cost the city an additional $15 million a year. Murray is planning to introduce a police-funding plan that includes a tax increase to meet the cost.
Slow response times by Seattle Police have been a serious concern with complaint after complaint piling up. Last month, Seattle Police failed to respond to 911 calls at the scene of a car crash during evening rush hour. Two drivers and witnesses who called police told dispatchers they “thought the man who caused the accident was drunk and they feared he could hurt or even kill someone if he left the scene.” The drivers waited three-and-a-half hours making repeated 911 calls, but Seattle Police failed to respond.
Meanwhile, the Seattle City Council just voted to buy out Pronto, the failed bike share company, with Murray’s approval. The city will spend $1.4 million for the initial buyout, and then another $5 million more in 2017. From then, the city will spend about $2 million each year.
Of course, this is assuming that the city’s plans for the bike-share company do not go over budget. Yeah, right.
What’s more important, ensuring one of the most important functions of a city runs smoothly or ensuring the city maintains a false sense of eco-progressive credibility by pumping money into a failed “green” mode of transportation?
By every indication, Seattle officials appear to believe it is the latter. That reasoning has a lot to do with the fact that, for liberals, it doesn’t really matter if their extreme “green” agenda doesn’t really work. It just has to look like it works.
Worse, it’s taxpayers who pick up the check without seeing any real benefit. And, it’s taxpayers who have to pay higher taxes (like those Murray is expected to propose) to receive essential services like some semblance of police protection.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens when liberals have their way in government. All reason is thrown out in favor of ideological delusions.
“That reasoning has a lot to do with the fact that, for liberals, it doesn’t really matter if their extreme “green” agenda doesn’t really work. It just has to look like it works”
No way. It doesn’t have to look like it works, it has to FEEL like it works.
Rather than regurgitating Shift’s drooling ignorance of why we creators in Seattle allocate the wealth we have produced, why not work on ending the chronic welfare dependency the conservative areas of our state exhibit? Staunching the flow of money out of Seattle would actually help; mindlessly repeating Shift’s abject ignorance does nothing but amuse.
Rather than regurgitating your drooling ignorance of Shift’s articles, why not go to some other site where your idiotic opinions matter?
“Seattle’s roaring economy — you know, the one despite decades of liberal government policy”
There, fixed it for you. You’re welcome.
So, any idea why Seattle keeps growing, and Eastern Washington (and other conservative areas) keep languishing, despite the constant hefty government welfare payments from the liberal areas to the conservative ones?
Or has that reality been labeled doubleplus unpossible, and thrown down the Memory Hole?
Just imagine the economic powerhouse Seattle would be if not for loony liberal losers squandering all that productivity on failed bikeshare companies put forth by people of dubious ethics with hidden agendas. They could afford all the police they needed without any tax increases. Leftist’s can’t have that.
Please don’t pretend to know anything about ethics until you show something other than raw, naked fear at the very thought of learning how your heroes at the Senate Majority Coalition created it.
Meanwhile, no one in Seattle has to imagine what an economic powerhouse looks like; we just compare ourselves to the parts of our state which always and forever have embraced conservatism.
(What will happen to them if we ever get their hands off our wallets? It’s not like they’re very good at the self-sufficiency thing…)
“Please don’t pretend to know anything about ethics until you show something other than raw, naked fear at the very thought of learning how your heroes at the Senate Majority Coalition created it”
Wow, comrade, hyperbole much? 2 Senators decide to act like adults and represent their constituents instead of public unions and you see some dark conspiracy akin to Greenie giving away the farm in secret meetings with union bosses. You should check if the Ministry of Truth’s health plan covers Xanax.
“What will happen to them if we ever get their hands off our wallets?”
Typical leftist, claiming others success as your own while passing off your failures to someone else. Without a half dozen fat wallets, yours would be as empty as your ideology.
Wow, comrade, hyperbole much?
Nope. You loudly declaimed that you wanted to learn nothing whatsoever about the details of the very act you’re now praising.
The rest of your comment reveals your continuing inability to comprehend just how deeply the welfare queens in conservative counties depend upon the largess of liberals in King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties. (However, I do agree that pounding, angry, contra-factual denial of obvious external reality remains the best of your meager options,)
Seattle’s roaring economy — you know, the one preceded by decades of liberal government policy? — is creating the need for more public transportation, more police, more affordable housing, and so forth. Spending money on one of these needs d
“Seattle’s roaring economy — you know, the one despite decades of liberal government policy”
There, fixed it for you. You’re welcome.
Seattle Government is Nucking Futs