After Rescinding Covid-Era Policy, Seattle Police Begin Jailing Petty Criminals Again
In 2022, Seattle Police spent 18,615 hours responding to organized retail crime calls, equivalent to a year’s worth of work for nine officers.
The damage from COVID-era policies has lingered for many years.
For example, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) could not book individuals arrested for minor offenses, including shoplifting and other non-violent property crimes, into the King County Jail. The COVID era rules, designed to “slow the spread,” resulted in a de facto “catch and release” program.
Now, years after the contagion has morphed into an endemic disease that people will contract many times over the course of their lives, the city has rescinded this policy.
The change, which went into effect earlier this month, reverses pandemic-era restrictions by King County that kept Seattle police from booking all but the most serious misdemeanors into the slammer.
Officials in the Emerald City argued the policy hamstrung prosecutors and cops.
But now Seattle’s ne’re-do-wells will face a jail cell if they flaunt the law.
The move is a win for local law enforcement, which has long pushed for more tools to fight a four-year crime wave that has continued since the pandemic — despite crime in nearly every other major city declining, an analysis by the Seattle Times showed.
The city became an epicenter of organized retail theft as a result. In 2022, Seattle Police spent 18,615 hours responding to organized retail crime calls, equivalent to a year’s worth of work for nine officers. This high volume of incidents strained police resources and made it challenging to prevent even more crime.
With no consequences, the problem became continually worse.
FOX 13 News spoke to Seattle retail workers who say they are constantly dealing with thieves.
“Growing into an exorbitant issue that really we don’t know how to get a handle on,” said Derek Pinder.
Derek Pinder is the assistant manager for Simply Seattle. He says on any given day, he’ll have three to five people come into the store trying to shoplift.
“There’s no real consequences for their actions. So, it is just continuing to expand,” he claimed.
There are so many valuable lessons to be learned related to pandemic polices. Perhaps one of the most important is to not sacrifice effective criminal justice programs due to pseudoscience and press-induced fear.
Hopefully, the businesses in the Seattle area will fully recover from this poor decision and public safety from criminals will be prioritized in the future.
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“There are so many valuable lessons to be learned related to pandemic polices.”
Yep, many lessons.
1. Seattle and many other leftist cities are worse than third world countries.
2. Our medical community sold its soul for money, making Americans trust a syphilitic whore over a doctor or a hospital.
3. Our once liberal leftist media became a full throttle propaganda arm for global masters seeking to turn the citizens of the world into serfs.
4. Democrats don’t care about you. They care about POWER and will ruin your life to get it and keep it.
5. Many Americans were forced to take a killer “vaccine” or lose their jobs and their livelihoods.
6. Pharmaceutical companies should be sued for their lies, which permitted them to have immunity from the lives they ruined. False claims to obtain immunity should erase that immunity.
7. There is not enough ~~~~ in the world to punish those who were complicit in their lies.
So crime is now illegal again.
Anything happen this month to cause the west coast progressives to re-assess their soft-on-crime approach? Anything?
Amazing how an election, and especially the election of one person, can change so much and so quickly.
No. Not in Wa.
Ferguson won.
All the leftists won.
All the leftist policies survived initiatives to repeal.
GOP became even worse minority.
Wa is a hell hole.
They “say” they will arrest, just like they will clear out the homeless camps.
Also – ONLY GOING INTO EFFEDT THIS MONTH????????? wow- practically with the same enthusiasm leftists have in paying back student loans. Why not wait until 2030?
CA had a ballot initiative (opposed by the governor) that rescinded some of the earlier provisions of an initiative to reduce penalties and classify some felonies to misdemeanor. The measure to return to some of the original penalties passed approximately 2 to 1 (they are still counting here in the hi-tech state). The citizens had to battle the gov and legislature to get the thing (Proposition 36) on the ballot.
Maybe WA did similar.
no they are not going to enforce the law.
What they will do is play football with the prison industrial complex. Prison beds are big money. Not to mention the prosecutors, the admin, the recovery and treatment pipelines, the free medical, the football of trannies in women’s prisons… all this. Ferguson LOVES it.
Although I vacated Wa a year ago- I still have pulse of what is going on and have had to go back a few times for work and family. The walking crime drug zombies are there to stay.
Lawlessness, anarchy and death by guided stolen car missile are still blatant in your face realities.
oh- and coming soon… MEXICAN GANG WARS!!!!! Well they’ve been there for a while in Shelton. They’ve over run the police many times.
Portland expanded the city council from 5 to 12 by adding 7 kool-aid drinking Marxists. They have pledged to oppose any changes imposed by the Trump administration. 2025 will be the year of doubling down on stupid.