Rantz: Another business ditches Seattle over safety concerns, CM Herbold on defensive
Feb 22, 2021, 8:05 PM | Updated: Feb 23, 2021, 5:33 am
#17: Seattle burglary explodes 87% downtown after coronavirus policy, crisis. Click here to read more (Photo: Jason Rantz/KTTH)
(Photo: Jason Rantz/KTTH)
Another Seattle business has decided to ditch its office location due to concerns over employee safety. Meanwhile, we get more defensive posturing from Seattle’s most dishonest councilmember, Lisa Herbold.
Tech startup Syndio announced it’s leaving its office location in Pioneer Square, citing the area’s surging crime. The company does not know where it will move to next, but doesn’t want to have to leave Seattle. But after a series of break-ins, it was left with little choice.
“We want to stay in our city. We want to support the tech boom and growth, and support that community that is so robust and thriving in our city. But from a logistical place of business, it’s getting really tough to figure out where to be from a safety perspective,” Syndio CEO Maria Colacurcio told the Puget Sound Business Journal. “I’m struggling to figure out how to continue to be a part of this awesome tech community in the city of Seattle while balancing employee safety and figuring out where we can be.”
Seattle is on life-support. This is the latest evidence the city is about to flatline.
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Syndio isn’t the only company to recently announce its departure.
Global chemical distributor TR International called Seattle its home for two decades. But after too many close calls between the city’s violent homeless population, the CEO called it quits. CEO Megan Gluth-Bohan moved the headquarters to Edmonds. She said downtown Seattle “embarrassed” her.
“We had one female employee chased into a Starbucks,” Gluth-Bohan told KING 5. “Business partners coming in for meetings were dodging human fecal matter and homeless people on the sidewalk. We had an employee paying for parking after work — she had her driver’s side window down working the parking machine, and someone attempted to enter her car.”
As the situation worsens, Seattle City Councilmembers plant their collective heads in the sand. They’re mostly silent on these issues, instead pretending to have a plan to address the crisis. Their plan? Defunding the police — the very resource that could help get this worsening situation under control.
Excuses, excuses
After Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and interim Seattle Police Department Chief Adrian Diaz questioned whether or not the council cares about the crime surge, Councilmember Lisa Herbold submitted a press release masquerading as an editorial to the Seattle Times. It’s the most she’s commented on the crime increases this year. It’s as weak as her strategy to protect the city from crime.
Pretending the criticism was coming from the media, and not the mayor and police chief, Herbold went on the defensive:
In Seattle, there’s a pattern to some media coverage of crime when, tragically, it happens: Some reporting suggests an untrue narrative that the City Council ‘tied SPD’s hands’ or is ‘unconcerned about crime.’
This is inaccurate and misleading. Under Seattle’s Charter, council does not and cannot direct police. We are not in the chain of command nor in the executive branch of government. The council makes a budget and sets the policy. Though officer staffing decreased by 135 during 2020, no officers were laid off as a result of council’s budget reductions.
Herbold’s defense of her record is transparently awful. It’s equal parts embarrassing. Who does she think she’s fooling?
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Herbold the Terrible (Liar)
Talk about inaccurate and misleading! No, the council does not direct the police department. It just labels cops as racist murderers, stays silent as Antifa mobs try to murder them, and defunds the department by 20% — with more cuts promised.
As a result, Herbold didn’t have to lay off any officers. They quit in historic numbers that still show no sign of subsiding. Officers don’t want to work in this city because of anti-police partisans like Herbold.
This isn’t to say Herbold didn’t try to lay off officers. She quite literally tried to exclusively fire white officers in 2020. She offered up a legally dubious case, which was rightly rejected, even earning national mockery. But Herbold and the council won’t stop. They plan to push the issue as they renegotiate the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract.
Crime is up by design
Seattle has created an environment of lawlessness. That always begets more lawlessness. It’s not so much that council ignored, downplayed, or even endorsed Antifa violence and rioting during 2020’s “summer of love.” They are actively trying to legalize crime.
Herbold is actively forwarding legislation that effectively legalizes most misdemeanor crimes.
The so-called “poverty defense” bill creates an affirmative defense for crimes, so long as you either show “symptoms” of a mental illness or are homeless. The very crimes plaguing the city, chasing businesses out of town, are the ones she will offer protections from prosecution.
Herbold says she cares about the crime plaguing the city, while legalizing the very criminal acts people are complaining about.
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