Looking at the situation from a distance, you might be tempted to believe that Seattle, like Portland, has somehow become populated exclusively by anarchists and socialists who wish they could somehow transplant their city out of the United States and plunk it down in…who knows…1983’s Soviet Union, maybe?
While a fair share of American cities have seen protests and violence in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Seattle stands alone as having allowed hundreds of these boneheads actually take over a police precinct and a significant chunk of the downtown area. The Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone may be history, but the city still has a mayor that would rather support anarchists than the police and a city council that is nearly as removed from reality as the one in Minneapolis? These folks were elected, so one has to conclude that Seattle is indeed filled with people so open-minded that they lost their brains somewhere along the way.
But there may be hope.
According to Q13 Fox in Seattle, not everyone in the city is pleased with the city council’s proposal to slash funding for the cops: “The Seattle City Council heard from hundreds during Wednesday’s budget meeting as members get closer to a vote on whether to defund the police department by 50 percent, a decision that could lead to the firing of hundreds of officers. One day after launching a ‘Stop Defunding’ petition, the Seattle Police Officers Guild said they already collected more than 20,000 signatures.”
The petition in question reads: “On Monday, August 3rd 2020, despite having no specific plan, the Seattle City Council will vote to defund the Seattle Police Department. The defunding of the SPD would mean that up to 800 officers would be fired. That’s over half of all sworn officers. It would also mean immensely longer 911 response times and of course, higher crime rates. Please sign our petition to stop the defunding of the Seattle Police Department and send a message to the city council that says ‘no’ to the defunding the Seattle Police Department.”
In remarks to the media after the most recent city council meeting, Mike Solan of the Seattle Police Officers Guild urged the public to stand up against the extremism running through the local government.
“What’s quite clear is that there is an activist class that is deeply entrenched in the political public safety conversations here, and they bombarded the public comment line. It was close to 300 people,” noted Solan. “In 36 hours, we have over 20,000 signatures that are being used to push against this defunding nonsense. This is the majority, the ignored majority I talked to and referred to. The reasonable majority of Seattle citizens and residents across this region that are showing support for law enforcement, saying no, no more, no more of your unreasonable activism.”
The ignored majority. We like that.
Let’s hope that it’s true not only of Seattle but the rest of this country as well. It could save us from some very dark days in the not-too-distant future.
