A few photos from my visit to Sixth Ave. and Pine Street this morning

Everyone seems to be trying to make sense of yesterday’s action and determine if the City could have done more. Personally, I think SPD officers did a terrific job channeling, quelling, protecting, seizing and arresting where necessary. Some radio voices have called yesterday “WTO II,” but I have a feeling those might be people who weren’t here during WTO I.

A few photos from my visit to Sixth Ave. and Pine Street this morning

A lot of people are talking about what the message from the destruction is supposed to be. I’m “the establishment,” so I know I’m not supposed to understand the message. No one is for corporate greed, but I do like jobs in Downtown. I need a new pair of running pants and was thinking about going to Niketown soon (gasp). I don’t agree with everything in his post, but I did find Brendan Kiley’s post from early, early this morning, “Why All the Smashy-Smashy? A Beginner’s Guide to Targeted Property Destruction,” to be thought-provoking.

A few photos from my visit to Sixth Ave. and Pine Street this morning

I was on the UW campus in 1986 and recall the anti-aparthied actions. I recall the shantytown in Red Square and the crashing of Board of Regents meetings, but not the breaking of a window. It’s hard for me to see the Black Bloc as a meaningful, effective extension or adaptation of the track I personally value more – peaceful, focused civil demonstration and, when necessary, disobedience.

OK, I’ll ask and learn, but I’m not optimistic about warming to this idea. I know they aren’t the drones we hear about on the news in Iraq, but I still see it as a step further away from human interaction and decision-making. Even if I can be convinced that we – cities — need small, pilotless, helicopter-like vehicles for surveillance and searches, does every city have to have a drone or two? Couldn’t we have a regional holder of the drones? We could check them out as needed and share the cost maybe. And we could have a thoughtful conversation about whether we really need them and under what circumstances they should be checked out of the regional drone library.

Apparently we’re already under way since we’re training operators. How did that happen?

There’s a great power in standing up to be seen. We should do it more often.

For many of the neighbors, it was the first ever extensive walk around the area. Most people, if they walk in the area at all, have their route to and from home. Mr. Vega was on his usual route when he was jumped in November.

The tragedy of Danny Vega’s death brought press coverage to what locals in South Seattle who rely on transit in the Light Rail Corridor already know – too many frightening attacks with serious consequences have also occurred.  More than 30 street robberies or attempted robberies have occurred in South Seattle since Sept. 1, Seattle police reports indicate.

One attack is too many. Thirty is way, way too many. My greater neighborhood is filled with hardworking people, many of whom have no practical alternative to walking to and from the bus or light rail. Nor should they have to worry about walking to and from the bus or light rail. It has to be safe to walk to and from the Othello Street station, and from the Mt. Baker, Columbia City, and Henderson Street stations.

During Sunday night’s walk, organized by the Southeast Seattle Crime Prevention Council and followed Monday night by a walk around the Columbia City station, we looked for dark spots or secluded, dangerous areas. We found a full half block with no street lights and no lights on adjacent property, and five burnt out pedestrian-scale lights just across from the station itself. We found some places very well lit with well-trimmed landscaping. We saw the mounted video camera that captured the images of two young men stashing a jacket into a dumpster near where Danny Vega was beaten. We saw mostly good sidewalks, but some cracked and heaved areas that make walking (or rolling in a wheelchair) difficult.

In the end, though, there isn’t much unique about the greater Othello area. I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s a great neighborhood of small businesses, homes, a new apartment complex and the great Othello Park.  The attacks on people can and do happen just about anywhere.  They are thwarted by a combination of efforts and luck. More light, tidier landscaping, more eyes on the street from neighbors and other walkers.

While investigating the specific attack on Mr. Vega, SPD has also focused resources on preventing more attacks from occurring. Capt. Nolan of the South Precinct has responded to the attacks with emphasis patrols targeting the areas where these attacks have been occurring. Also, the precinct now deploys a two-officer special emphasis car that does nothing but cruise the corridor on the look out for transit predators. South Precinct Anti-Crime Teams and Gang Unit officers also work the problem. 

These are all good moves, though community members have reason to ask why the pattern of attacks wasn’t publicized sooner. I remain concerned that South Precinct doesn’t have the number of officers needed to cover the area with a consistent visible presence.  Not only are we not hiring to replace all our retiring or otherwise departing current officers, but events in other parts of the City (like Occupy) require shifting officers out of neighborhood patrol assignments and into special duties. The result is a patrol force stretched too thin.

For now – big thanks to Lieutenant Hayes and Detective Cookie for their company and assistance Sunday night.  The punch list from our Othello area walk-around includes replacing lights, adding new ones, trimming hedges, fixing sidewalks – and follow-through.

When I wore the sweatshirt in January I had more than one person say to me, a little grimly, “Wow. Bold move with the sweatshirt.”

Friday night I did a ride-along in Southwest Seattle. Before heading out for a couple of hours with the great and under-stated Ofcr. Heric, I had a few minutes of tense conversation with a lieutenant who said he feels “kicked in the face” by the letter Councilmembers Tim Burgess, Sally Bagshaw and I sent Friday to Mayor Mike McGinn, SPD Chief John Diaz, Seattle Police Management Association head Eric Sano and Seattle Police Officers Guild head Rich O’Neill. The letter details a host of changes we’d like to see in the realm of oversight, officer hiring and training. We said in the letter that recent events have caused erosion in public trust and that steps are required to rebuild trust and construct it anew where it has been missing for too long. The events slime all officers with a sticky sheen of doubt in the eyes of too many, despite the facts of everyday every day — every minute of every day — service and sacrifice demonstrated by Seattle police officers.

We have a disconnect at this point in time between those who feel like there’s too much heat on the police department right now and those who feel like there’s not enough. Officers like the lieutenant who had a few things to tell me Saturday night feel like we’re tearing the department up over a few isolated incidents of wrong doing (incidents which he strongly said “embarrass us all”). SPD officers have literally hundreds of thousands of contacts with us over the course of a year.

Unless the incident is a headline grabber, and few are, the stories of those contacts are usually held just by the officer and the people who were victims, survivors or aggressors.

Advocates from communities of color and more than a few people I run into around town say they’re appalled by what they see on the TV news, the grainy video from patrol car dash cams and bystander cellphones.  Many of us know particular officers.  We know by name and appreciate the officers who visit our crime prevention councils, business groups and community clubs. We don’t recognize those officers and their actions. We realize our city has plenty of bad actors, but we still are repelled by the seeming abuses of power. The rash of incidents in the press causes wonder about department culture and self-awareness.  There’s enough wonder that we’ve attracted the notice of Department of Justice investigators.

Two seeming juxtapositions live simultaneously in many of us at this time: appreciation for service and sacrifice by the officers we know and revulsion at the sight of violent abuse of power by others, and conviction that the department is both excellent and marred by transgressions.

I think that’s what’s difficult for both sides to understand.

Officers hear support, thankfully, from people everyday who appreciate their intervention, but those same people may also hold concern about the department itself, about the internal procedures, customs and expectations.

Getting to a better place, where excellence in individual experiences matches up with excellence in overall department reputation, requires us to acknowledge these mismatches. Denying it does nothing but widen the gulf.

1.     Intellectual sloppiness – The author calls social justice a “socialist scheme” and pines for the good old days when communism and socialism were considered bad. OK, totalitarianism of whatever stripe is bad. Single-party, de-facto dictatorship is bad. Blind zealotry to a leader or ideal is bad.  Socialism as an economic organizing principle, though? Degrees of socialism run a spectrum depending upon the amount of state involvement in the economy and in provision of social programs. North Korean socialism (coupled with dictatorship) is vastly different from Norwegian socialism (coupled with a constitutional monarchy and parliament). “Social justice = socialist scheme” might be alliterative and sound nice when said out loud, but it’s sloppy thinking. If you think the City’s Race & Social Justice Initiative is brainwashing propaganda, maybe just say that.

2.     At least implied insubordination – First from the newsletter article: “I’m not conflating Seattle’s quaint socialist cabal with the brutal tyrants of the last century.” Phew! Then: “I’ve given some thought to my own RSJI participation to date. The ‘Perspectives in Profiling’ class (or as one officer put it, one of our ‘de-policing classes’) served as a good way to learn what the enemy is up to (Yes, enemy. A liberal after my money in taxes maybe my opponent, but a socialist attacking the Constitution and my liberty is my enemy).” Language has been in the spotlight since the Tucson shootings and plenty of people on the Right and Left are guilty of using loaded language, but repeating a mistake doesn’t make things better. Dave Ross talked about this passage on his radio show this morning and argued that by extension this officer is calling his command staff, the Mayor and the City Council his enemies. And is “enemies” the word you really want to use? Words matter. Which takes us to…

3.     Compounded distrust – With all the current focus on how SPD officers engage with people of color in our city, could this article have been printed at a worse time?  I’m not using the officer’s name here because I don’t want to draw more attention to him while he’s on-duty. I have faith that every encounter he has is professional and that he gives 110 percent of himself to whoever needs help, no matter his take on the caller’s or victim’s political beliefs. However, this is the age of immediate information.  His article has been reproduced on blogs and talked about in the Stranger, in The Seattle Times and on KIRO. Do he and every male Seattle officer really need people checking their name plates and wondering, “Is this the guy who calls social justice advocates his enemies?”

As much as I’d like for Seattleites to recognize that police officers are individuals and that the extreme views of one officer don’t represent the views of even a fraction of his colleagues, people make generalizations. The irony is that a couple of weeks ago I attended a youth-initiated forum called Building Bridges. More than a dozen SPD officers took part talking with youth from different parts of the city, but mostly from the Central and South parts of Seattle where violence and silence have been too destructive.  While the kids expressed frustration at not being respected by the police, the police had the exact same frustration. Both sides felt stereotyped and never given a fair shake; never seen as an individual. They talked about race, they talked about poverty, they talked about violence and they walked out of the rooms knowing each other just a little bit better.

I hope the Guardian takes moment to recognize the hard work of these officers in an upcoming issue.

The Rainier Valley Food Bank had their external storage container cleaned out by thieves Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. They had enough food inside the warehouse (and I use that term loosely as it’s a tiny space) to serve the regular Wednesday morning crowd of seniors and disabled people, but Saturday — the day after tomorrow — low- income individuals and families will line-up for help making it through Thanksgiving week, the week of giving thanks for bounty and cooperation. The food bank is accepting donations 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 4205 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98118. If you aren’t able to help Rainier Valley Food Bank make up the loss, maybe consider helping out the food bank in your part of town. Overall Seattle’s food banks report 50 percent to 100 percent increases in the numbers of people lining up for help. The Mayor and Council made sure next year’s City budget maintains City support for food banks, but no one’s budgets anticipate grand-scale thievery from food banks.

I and my staff volunteered at the Rainier Valley Food Bank earlier this year on a Wednesday. They run a great operation. No food bank deserves to be ripped off. It’s hard to imagine the thinking behind the crime. Taking the entire contents of the storage container isn’t about an individual who is hungry. Will they re-sell the bags of rice, the boxes of pasta, the cans of tuna? I’m clearly missing the master- mind strategy of it all.

An hour later the news broke that a man had been shot by police in Tukwila as officers staked out a car matching the vehicle SPD suspected was involved in the Halloween night killing of Officer Brenton. Since then investigators have found explosives, assault rifles and printed material about abuses by police officers.

I have done a few ride-alongs with SPD officers since coming onto the Council. More often than not at some point in the night my assigned officer for the evening calls home on his cellphone while we’re out to say hello and good night to someone. Usually I hear a few questions about how someone’s day was or what the kids are doing. The calls are short. Pretty much the same type most of us make during our work day. I wonder if Officer Brenton made a call like that Halloween night.

I stopped being in a rush as I came off I-5 to get onto I-90 on my way to Rainier Ave. S. In front of me blocking the right lane at the end of the connecting ramp was a car, perpendicular across my lane and smashed into the concrete barrier to the right. I was the third person there. Airbags had popped, clear fluid was running out the front of the car and we were awash in traffic noise. A young guy had pulled over ahead of the wreck and was talking to the driver, a woman leaning back and not moving, but talking. As I walked toward them he motioned for me to call 9-1-1, so I dashed the few steps back to my car and called. It was then that I realized I had no idea how to turn up the volume on my phone. I did the best I could to describe where we were on the ramp and to hear the operator’s questions. I got off the phone, but started to worry whether I’d told the operator the right ramp direction. Was it really south-bound i_5 to east-bound I-90? Did I get that right?

In the meantime, more vehicles pulled over and the young guy kept talking to the driver. Turns out he’s an emergency medical technician in training. The only thing better if you’re in a wreck, I suppose, is if a doctor pulls over immediately – and that’s what happened next. Two of them! The second one pulled over and helped with what looked like a full emergency medical response bag. It was good timing for the woman in the wreck because before the doctor pulled over, the EMT in training, who was holding the woman’s head, told me to get her name, age, any medications she was taking, and to take her pulse. Weirdly, her husband had pulled up a moment before (apparently caravanning), so the name, age and medications weren’t too much of a challenge for me. I did then find out that I might not be the best person to take your pulse in an emergency.

I placed my fingers on her throat and found her pulse. Then I counted the beats over ten seconds. And then I multiplied.

“120,” I told the EMT in training. And then a few moments passed.

“No, 72. Yeah, 72. I did the math wrong.”

OK, standing between I-5 and I-90, math is not my strong suit. Looking at a person in a crunched car in pain, thinking and acting may not be my strong suits. Cripes. I’m thankful that the Seattle Fire Department pulled up soon after. I told the medic what I knew and then got out of the way, but I realized after driving on that I never told the EMT in training or the doctor how grateful I was that they stopped to help. I’d love to know who they were. I’d also like to know how the driver is. All I could find out later was that SFD didn’t handle the transport and instead called for a private ambulance. That can be an indication that the woman’s injuries weren’t life-threatening.

It’s comforting to know people will pull over and help each other. It’s even more comforting if they know how to multiply.

Every year the Washington State Council of Firefighters hosts Fire Ops 101. It’s a day in which elected and appointed decision makers from around the state are run through the paces of being a firefighter. I’d been invited the past three years, but always had a conflict. This year I made with the help of Local 27, the Seattle firefighters union. A full day out in Richland at the Hammer training facility.

Did I mention I’m not good with heights or extended time in the sun? I had to do both in full bunking gear with air tank and mask. You can read about it here. Seattle has awesome firefighters who work under labor-intensive, technically demanding conditions. Thank you to Local 27 and the Washington State Council for the smart lobbying.

Every year the Washington State Council of Firefighters hosts Fire Ops 101. It’s a day in which elected and appointed decision makers from around the state are run through the paces of being a firefighter. I’d been invited the past three years, but always had a conflict. This year I made with the help of Local 27, the Seattle firefighters union. A full day out in Richland at the Hammer training facility.

Did I mention I’m not good with heights or extended time in the sun? I had to do both in full bunking gear with air tank and mask. You can read about it here. Seattle has awesome firefighters who work under labor-intensive, technically demanding conditions. Thank you to Local 27 and the Washington State Council for the smart lobbying.