Dori: Satterberg, judges bear some responsibility for downtown shooting

I’m getting very weary of all the hand-wringing in the city of Seattle, with politicians asking, “What should we do about all the violence in downtown Seattle?”

Before they identified any suspects in the downtown shooting, I said it was a drug- and gang-related shooting.

We have to allow cops to do their jobs. We have to stop the legalization of drugs in King County. We have to start putting criminals in jail — and keeping them there for more than a year.

The two downtown shooting suspects who were on the run, Marquise Tolbert and William Tolliver, were found in Las Vegas. They’ve been charged with first-degree murder and six counts each of first-degree assault. Prosecutors have asked that they be held without bail — yeah, that seems like a good idea. If only that kind of mentality would have been shown one of the dozens of times they were arrested before the downtown shooting.

You may remember the mother of William Tolliver told KOMO 4 News she hoped her son wasn’t with Marquise because Marquise was the real bad influence. Her son was just a “petty thief, not a bank robber” — he was just “in and out of stores.” Right, because robbing stores is completely fine, as long as you stay out of the banks. I’m sorry, but it’s that kind of parental attitude — minimizing your son’s crimes — that leads to this sort of behavior in the first place.

Dori: Seattle shooting suspects part of cycle of absent fathers

These guys, who are just 24, have 65 arrests between the two of them. In one prior case, Tolbert violently ripped a necklace off a woman’s neck. I’m tired of these arguments about what we need to do with funding to prevent gangs. We don’t need more programs. We need to put more money into jails and prisons. We need to stop allowing the possession of personal amounts of drugs in King County — and that’s on Prosecutor Dan Satterberg. I told Satterberg when he was on this radio show that refusing to prosecute small amounts of drugs was a disastrous plan.

It’s time to identify who is really at fault here, along with the criminals themselves. And I’m sad to say that it is our prosecutor, Dan Satterberg. The decriminalization of drugs has been an abject failure. You have shootouts between drug dealers and gang members in downtown Seattle at rush hour like it’s the Wild West. King County has become the most fertile place to be a drug dealer because the drug customers won’t be arrested. There are more customers and more addicts than ever before, which allows the gangs selling drugs to flourish.

Depending on the study, somewhere between 75 percent and 95 percent of boys and young men in gangs do not have a father at home. I know this is controversial, but there is no amount of money we can spend that’s going to fix that. Millions of dollars won’t fix the fact that they’ve had no positive male role models in their lives. Sadly, these boys get hard-wired for a disastrous life early on. The most efficient way we can deal with this is by locking them up when they commit violent crimes. Money does not solve systemic problems. Believe me.

I’ve had it with all the debate that’s going on over how to stop any more of these incidents from occurring. Satterberg and all of the revolving-door judges are responsible for these crimes almost as much as the criminals themselves. And unlike the gang members, Satterberg and the judges haven’t had their minds corrupted by a bad home life growing up — they’re making these decisions of their own free will.

So, what should we do to stop the violence in Seattle? Stop the legalization of drugs. Increase police patrols — and then let the cops actually do their jobs. Get rid of judges with revolving doors. Get rid of Satterberg if he refuses to enforce drug laws. Invest money in jails. There you have it. Problem solved.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from 12-3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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