Far-left Seattle City Council voted to override the mayor’s veto and will move forward with plan to defund the police department...

By a 7-2 vote, the far-left Seattle City Council has overrided the mayor’s veto and thus their plan to ‘defund the police’ will become reality.

The defund plan will include: cutting the police department staff by roughly 100 officers; Eliminating the department's Navigation Team, which serves as an outreach effort to the homeless and trimming the salaries of SPD’s command staff.

The mayor’s office put out a statement saying:

“Because of Council’s actions today, the Navigation team will be eliminated, severely restricting the City’s ability to move people out of homelessness and deal with encampments for the rest of this year. The City will move forward with layoffs for the City staff who are coordinating and helping individuals experiencing homelessness at encampments across the City.”

This news comes as downtown Seattle loses another big retailer. Columbia Sportswear says that their store that was looted in May will not reopen.

As the Oregonian newspaper reports:

“The departure of Columbia Sportswear is the latest in a series of high-profile closures in a part of Seattle...Since March, 126 street-level downtown business locations have closed, according to Downtown Seattle Association (DSA).In May, the 57-year-old Cinerama movie house announced it was shutting down “for the foreseeable future.” The Kress IGA supermarket, which had been at Third and Pike since 2008, shut down in August. Bergman Luggage, a downtown icon at Third and Stewart for more than 30 years, closed in early September. Baby & Company, a clothing boutique founded at First Avenue and Virginia Street 44 years ago, will close at the end of September.”

Businesses are fleeing the city now.

The Downtown Seattle Association released a statement after the vote yesterday warning that this won’t “result in real police reform and risk undermining community safety”.They point out that Council lacks a clear plan and their action today will not accomplish these important goals.”

Even before this defund movement came about, Seattle saw rampant street crime in the downtown area.

Last year, the ABC-affiliates there, KOMO-TV, put together a one-hour speech called “Seattle is Dying” documenting how city’s leaders tolerance of homelessness and crime has created 3rd World-like conditions in parts of the city with one grocery store having been forced to call 911 nearly 600 times over the past 18-months.

As reporter Eric Johnson wrote in the special “it's about citizens who don't feel safe taking their families into downtown Seattle. It's about parents who won't take their children into the public parks they pay for. It's about filth and degradation all around us. And theft and crime. It's about people who don't feel protected anymore, who don't feel like their voices are being heard.”

Michael Berry

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