There is an article today on the local KOMO Web site, regarding policing in Washington. It cites statistics on police officers per capita in the 50 states plus Washington DC. It says that Washington State comes in at Number 51. Yes, we have the lowest number of officers per capita than all other states, including California. It was also just announced that our state Legislature, heavily populated by DemocRats, has just raided the Law Enforcement Pension Fund to pay for its profligate spending spree.
It is well known around here that Seattle and most other good-sized cities in Washington are predominantly DemocRat, and that those people are heavily anti-police. They all have mostly-hostile Police Review Boards, which literally second-guess every incident of police use of force against the criminal element. Police officers responding to murders and assaults are even prosecuted and jailed for simply doing their jobs. This anti-police stance on the part of city governments has led to demoralization on the part of officers, and, especially since 2020, the difficulties in hiring and retaining competent officers. For many years, more officers have quit than can be hired and trained.
It is also well-known that Leftist prosecutors and judges regularly release repeat offenders back onto the streets, sometimes on the same day that they are arrested. Local leftist activist groups often pay their already-low bail to make sure the criminals spend little to no time in jail for their crimes. So levels of crime rise, and the public is put at extreme risk. Property crimes are no longer even reported to police, since the public knows that the crimes will rarely be investigated or solved. Rising numbers of homeless tents in neighborhoods bring more crime, as vagrants steal to support their drug addiction. Residents complain loudly, to no avail.
Below, I have copied some of the comments on that KOMO story, from local residents.
Obviously, local residents know exactly why their environment is increasingly lawless, with the neglect and outright hostility by their governments literally driving police officers away.
And, when the State Government tries to help?
Most of those “grants” come with complicated regulations and red tape, including DEI requirements (in spite of Trump administration regulations forbidding DEI). So no money gets disbursed and no police officers are hired. Besides, it’s very difficult to hire police, even when the money is there! See above.
In other law-enforcement (or lack thereof) news, the mayor of my town has issued new guidelines for keeping ICE out of the area, forbidding them from using public resources. This new rule is in effect immediately. No debate, no public hearings, just Leftist Virtue-signaling. The Everett schools trumpet their pride at all the illegal alien children they are educating, and as is usual for Leftist cities, the government talks big about not working with Federal immigration enforcement. They know full well that federal law trumps state and local law, and ICE officers are forced into daylight raids on homes and workplaces since they are not told about illegal alien criminals so they can pick them up from the jail.
Below are a couple of comments from the KOMO article.
The citizens are smarter than their leftist government, it seems. So the Left hates on police, releases career criminals back onto the streets, and tries to keep federal officers from doing their jobs (and not succeeding in anything but making themselves look silly or evil). You would think that the first job of any governmental unit would be to protect the public from crime and criminals so they can go about their daily business without fear. In Leftist cities, which is most of them, and ALL of them in Western Washington, their prime directive is protecting illegal immigrants and all other criminals, whom they see as the real victims. Western Washington gets the government it votes for.
In closing, I will cite my own aphorism, which I’m pretty sure is the truth.
NO LAW ENFORCEMENT = NO LAW. The rule of law is totally broken when the laws on the books are not enforced. Public order breaks down, and citizens must resort to protecting themselves as best they can.
Calling-all-RushBabes 