The Fight for the Soul of Seattle | A KOMO News Documentary

What Hacker News said

Recommends throwawaysea · 2021-07 · on “70% of San Francisco residents say quality of life has declined: poll”

The same thing has happened in Portland and Seattle, both cities with increasing amounts of property crime, increasing amounts of homeless campers taking up public spaces, increasing amounts of harassment from vagrants, widespread open drug-abuse, increasing amounts of blight as pristine greenbelts are trashed, and a revolving door of criminals who are released into the public without consequence by a permissive city leadership. Calls for "restorative justice" always mean being soft on crime, which removes deterrents for crime, and therefore enable increased crime. It's all so obvious and predictable, but these cities are such extreme political echo chambers that no other perspective is real

Recommends j8hn · 2021-08 · on “I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem”

I don't have any experience with the housing issue in California, but got involved a while back trying to find pragmatic solutions in Seattle. The situation is a mess and there is an entire "homeless industrial complex" complicating matters here, rife with fraud, misspending and cronyism. Every year it seems like many millions of dollars more are spent on this issue but it keeps getting visibly worse. At first I was in the "Housing First" crowd, but after my experiences I would say I more firmly believe in "Rehab First". A local news station released a great documentary called "Seattle is Dying". It has 10 million views since released a couple of years ago. [LINK] The sequel is "The Fight Fo

Cites cronix · 2020-12 · on “California plan for wealth tax on anyone who spends 60 days a year in the state”

If the majority of them weren't addicted to hardcore drugs and could make intelligent, rational decisions, I might agree that giving them money directly could be a good thing. Drug addicts tend to not make good monetary choices. See this recent documentary by KOMO News in Seattle about their problems, which are pretty similar to Portland's, SF's, LA's and a lot of other major cities with larger homeless populations. Crime is soaring. Most are homeless due to drug addiction. Until that part is solved and they can think clearly and rationalize normally again, giving them cash will likely only fuel the problem and keep them right where they're at. And with everyone walking around with $50k cash

Cites malandrew · 2021-05 · on “Citizen CEO offered to personally fund LA arson manhunt for the wrong person”

well part of the problem, in Seattle at least, is that even when they do catch the people responsible, the DA is pressured by the city council and mayors office to generally release people who go on to re-offend. I have friends on the police force in Seattle and they lament that there is no point in arresting certain people for property crime because they just get released. It just becomes a waste of their time with the paperwork and showing up to court for nothing to come of it. [LINK] [this video]

Cites throwawaysea · 2021-10 · on “End Amazon’s Surveillance Partnership with Police”

Some jurisdictions do, particularly in smaller cities like suburbs, where police staff aren't fully occupied with higher priority calls. However, many bigger cities are simply too understaffed compared to the past, and ignore property crimes as you say. This is especially true in West Coast cities like SF, Portland, and Seattle. For example Seattle has lost hundreds of police officers in the last year due to the push for defunding, hostile attitudes towards police from activists/local politicians, and the opportunity to have a less stressful/better paying job elsewhere after a very rough year dealing with near-daily rioting. At present, the city has only around 1000 officers and it is expect