Dori: Seattle police contract drama shows why cops are leaving city
Oct 23, 2018, 3:21 PM | Updated: 4:01 pm
(Matt Pitman, KIRO Radio)
(Matt Pitman, KIRO Radio)
Three members of the Seattle City Council — Mike O’Brien, Kshama Sawant, and Lisa Herbold — are thinking of rejecting the contract between the Seattle Police Officers Guild and the City of Seattle. To approve the Seattle police contract, you need a super majority, seven out of nine on the council, to approve it.
My colleague at KTTH, Jason Rantz, has a piece on MyNorthwest called, “Seattle police on the verge of extinction over contract dispute, cop says.” Jason talked with a Seattle police officer off the air who said that there is a mass exodus in SPD. My buddies, who are Seattle cops, have told me the same.
According to this former cop quoted in the article, 32 officers have contacted him within the past five days seeking information on how to laterally move to another agency.
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Seattle cops have been without a contract for years. They finally reach an agreement, and then the anti-cop Seattle City Council decides there needs to be an independent review of the Seattle police contract.
Between this contract issue and then Initiative 940, where they want a citizen panel to oversee all cops — a panel that would include illegal immigrants, children, and previously incarcerated people — things are really going nuts around here.
Why would you want to be a cop in our state? They’re risking their lives every day, and they’re hearing from a Seattle City Council member that they are murderers. We’ve got an anti-cop mania around here.
The cop in Jason’s story said that SPD is on the verge of extinction because police officers are leaving in droves. They have a city council that calls them murderers when they’re not. They have a community that is saying people are joining the police department just to kill. And those people are writing initiatives that would allow children and criminals to oversee police officers.
This is spreading throughout the region. When Seattle sneezes, all of the Puget Sound gets that cold. And you’re seeing what’s happening on the streets. The drug criminals have taken over around here.
I’m telling you right now — and nearly every major prediction we’ve ever made on this show has proven to be true — when we have the inevitable economic downturn that will come one day, if we don’t have cops on the street and if we have radicals running the city, it’s going to be really ugly.
