Dori: Seattle’s double standard allows drugs, tickets cars close to driveways

The city has a double standard when it comes to who is punished for not following the laws.

I got an email from a listener who said that she got a $47 ticket for parking within four feet of a driveway, even though she was not blocking the driveway. She wrote:

There are no consequences, penalties, or fines for those living homeless. Our city is a garbage dump due to how they occupy our land and leave trash, stolen shopping carts, human and animal feces, needles, etc. They are living on our dime — trashing public property, trespassing etc. Tax-paying citizens are ignored — the mayor and council members are useless. The homeless are coddled, and we pay for it all.

It is a problem. It is a problem that we have two dramatically different sets of laws, or at least two dramatically different classes of people in terms of accountability to the law.

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Think about that. You can shoot up heroin in front of a police officer in Seattle and face no consequences. But, if you’re at a bar and have an open beer bottle, and want to walk to another bar down the block, you can be given a ticket for having an open container.

Protesters can put their arms in PVC pipes and lie down in the middle of downtown streets, grid-locking the region for hours. Oh, but if you jaywalk trying to get to your office building, you can get a ticket for that.

You can walk right out of a grocery store with a cart full of shoplifted goods, and no one will stop you. But if you park within four feet of a driveway, you’d better beware — you’re going to face the consequences.

Another emailer told us that they are now enforcing noise regulations on Alki when it comes to loud vehicles. But, she pointed out, you can defecate on the sidewalk.

I don’t know if our prosecutor could explain why we have two different classes of people — one that is completely exempt from our laws, and one subject to our laws. It doesn’t make any sense.

The Puget Sound Auto Theft Task Force just revealed that in a two-day period, thieves stole 70 cars in the three-county area that is King, Snohomish, and Pierce Counties, with 44            stolen from King County. That’s a bit shocking to me. We’re talking about a car being stolen in our region every 40 minutes.

We have prosecutors who won’t prosecute, leading to a revolving door of criminals. We have cops who do great things, but get reprimanded by bizarre command decisions. And so the word is out that if you want to be a drug-addicted criminal, there simply is no path-of-least-resistance area like the Puget Sound right now. What’s the result? Seventy stolen cars in 48 hours.

That’s what happens when you elect the kind of people we have running things around here. That’s what happens when you put one party in charge. That’s the kind of double standard you get — criminals who are exempt from the law and hardworking, tax-paying, mostly law-abiding citizens who are subject to it if they dare put a toe out of line.

To my emailer — no, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

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