SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Seattle council gets its due for catering to ‘grievance crowd’

Aug 17, 2016, 6:49 AM

black lives matter...

Dori says the Seattle City Council has no one to blame but themselves for the SPd precinct criticism. (KIRO 7)

(KIRO 7)

You reap what you sow and Seattle council members are in deep right now.

As you’ve likely heard by now, there was a contentious Seattle City Council meeting Monday. Protesters do not want a new north precinct to be built. The building is projected to cost $149 million, which would make it one of the most expensive police stations ever constructed in America.

Upshaw: Black Lives Matter’s ‘reservoir of rage’ is misdirected on SPD ‘bunker’

I do not understand the cost of this thing. And that’s where I think the argument could easily be made.

But, at these council meetings, the protesters very much have an anti-police agenda. I will admit, listening to the council, which is filled with people who got elected by pandering to those with grievances in our society, it is interesting that the council now has to deal with the consequences of an atmosphere that they have very much created themselves.

And now that they’re the target of this grievance parade, they don’t like it at all.

With that said, I don’t like the demonization of cops or people calling a police station a bunker and denouncing it as bomb proof (why would you want one that is bombable?). If you just argued this project on the cost, I’d be right there with these people. Much like with Bertha, this city can’t just replace something, they needed it to be the biggest in the world.

But this is a horrible time to be inspiring people toward more hatred of cops, and it’s a dangerous narrative unfolding in our city.

Then again, this is a narrative that has been carefully nurtured by our local politicians. This has been going on for two decades, going back to when council members encouraged anarchists to come into the city for the May Day protests.

We’ve had an atmosphere of politics here that has catered to the grievance crowd. And, inevitably, that crowd will turn on them, and that’s what’s happened now.

So I must admit to a little bit of Schadenfreude that the council is suffering the impact of what they inflicted on all of us for years.

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Seattle council gets its due for catering to ‘grievance crowd’