9 ms·

Seattle police chief said on TV [1] that "Rapes, robberies and all sorts of violent acts have been occurring in the area and we're not able to get to [them]."

Seattle police chief said on TV [1] that "Rapes, robberies and all sorts of violent acts have been occurring in the area and we're not able to get to [them]." Doesn’t sound very utopian [1] https://twitter.com/mrandyngo/status/1271291958296604675?s=21 https://twitter.com/mrandyngo/status/1271291958296604675?s=2...

pjc50 6y ago
She said that, but is it actually true? Besides, one of the long list of complaints is that police are often useless or worse at dealing with rapes; Minneapolis PD had a massive backlog of untested rape kits. (edit: correctly gendered the police chief, hadn't bothered looking at the tweet)
- dgellow 6y ago
  > He said that I'm quite sure she's a woman.
- mcv 6y ago
  Yeah, rape is a particularly lousy excuse considering the poor record many police departments have in addressing rape cases.
- cwkoss 6y ago
  In the past week SPD has lied about: - "Incendiary devices" being thrown at officers: it was a candle - as can be seen by the sticker visible in SPD's own tweets - Businesses being 'extorted': appears SPD leadership got a false report of this from a local alt-right personality and spread it in their press briefing. - People checking IDs for entry: streamers have been trying to find anyone on the ground who can substantiate this claim and have been unable to. A small handful of people have been kicked out by being swarmed by a crowd and told to leave (and some more colorful language) without violence. These few instances have all either been counter-protestors or people trying to be senselessly destructive, as far as I've seen. I'm skeptical of these most recent claims
  - HeroOfAges 6y ago
    Why can't people counter protest?
    - noobaccount 6y ago
      They can. Public officials spreading damaging falsehoods may violate the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments. I believe that is the issue being discussed.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > A small handful of people have been kicked out by being swarmed by a crowd and told to leave (and some more colorful language) without violence. This sounds like at least an implicit threat of imminent violence, without disputing the rest of your description.
thatcat 6y ago
Chief later suggested building some sort of wall...
gnu8 6y ago
I would not expect the rate of rapes, robberies, and violent acts to drop to zero unless the area is completely depopulated. However, I think it is safe to assume that there are fewer instances occurring now that the police are excluded from the area.
- lwheelock 6y ago
  With what logic is it “safe to assume that”? Police presence ergo more rape?
  - hopfscotch2 6y ago
    Yes. Where police go, violence follows.
mcv 6y ago
Wasn't it the police who abandoned this area in the first place? The impression I'm getting from this and other events from the past weeks is that the police would like us to believe that without them, society turns to chaos, but in practice, US police turns out to be a major source of chaos, and without them things often turn much more peaceful. I'm not saying there should be no police at all, but that police should work with the community, instead of trying to dominate it.
- _-david-_ 6y ago
  The police left because they were told to leave not because they wanted to leave.
  - loeg 6y ago
    It is really not clear at this time why they left. Chief Best claims she did not order police to leave. SPD's organizational structure is such that the police report only to the police chief. However, it was clearly organized — police brought in a rented commercial truck and removed some belongings, and boarded up the outside.
    - downerending 6y ago
      It's somewhat telling that both the mayor and the police chief deny ordering the abandonment. Who the hell is running the city?
      - loeg 6y ago
        The open question is not about the city generally, but the police. "Who are the Seattle police accountable to?" And: good question. No one, apparently.
        downerending 6y ago
        The question of why the Seattle police abandoned a precinct isn't really a question of who the police are accountable to. Clearly someone who feels that the police are a malign force ordered them to leave. Who had the power and did it? My guess is the mayor and/or the forces that pull her strings.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> Seattle police chief said on TV And the media didn't post a non-biased account of what's going on? It's become incredibly difficult to take what the PD says at face value anymore.
- TheGrim999 6y ago
  Whether or not the PD is biased is one thing, but it's kind of a joke if you're honestly suggesting that Seattle news media isn't also extremely biased and partisan.
  - jyrkesh 6y ago
    While The Stranger is obviously pretty left-wing, KOMO, KIRO and MyNorthWest are pretty right-wing, actually. KOMO in particular did the Seattle is Dying[1] documentary that was ultimately pro law-enforcement (framing the homelessness debate largely as a problem with judges not sentencing detained criminals, leading to a reduction in arrests as police felt they were useless). Jason Rantz[2] gets a fair bit of publicity out here as well for his conservative coverage of this stuff. Now I'd say your statement about "extremely biased and partisan" is accurate, but the implication was that it's exclusively in a pro-protestor sense, and that's really not the case. I say this as someone who lives on the political fringes and generally disagrees with both sides of the partisanship. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw [2] https://mynorthwest.com/category/jason-rantz/ https://mynorthwest.com/category/jason-rantz/?
- appleflaxen 6y ago
  and the media
ilikehurdles 6y ago
> Seattle police chief But what did the CCP say? What's Trump's report of on-the-ground conditions?
rideontime 6y ago
How would she know?
iron0013 6y ago
How, after all the events of the last two weeks, is anyone still willing to take a police-person’s word as truth?
- Fellshard 6y ago
  Because some people are still rational enough to treat individuals on an individual basis.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    If that means people are taking the SPC's word as truth because they have priors she's generally truthful, that's sensible. If people are taking the SPC's word as truth because they have priors that cops are truthful, that's an invalid prior based on how much general lying recent events have demonstrated cops do. If people are taking SPC's word as truth because they have no priors, that's bias to authority and people should probably employ more skepticism. Do we have any evidence that the Seattle police chief is generally truthful?
    - Fellshard 6y ago
      That is a much better question.
    - loeg 6y ago
      > Do we have any evidence that the Seattle police chief is generally truthful? Chief Best has made multiple false statements of fact just this week, so, no.
  - rideontime 6y ago
    And this particular individual has already had to walk back false statements: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-area-protests-updates-for-thursday-june-11/#update-12846417 https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-area-prote... > The Seattle Police Department walked back its claim, widely repeated in the news media, that denizens of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone are extorting businesses. > "That has not happened affirmatively," Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best in a news conference Thursday afternoon, adding that the police department had based earlier claims on anecdotal reports, including in the news and on social media. "We haven't had any formal reports of this occurring." > That contradicts earlier statements from the police.
hsod 6y ago
she also said they were extorting businesses and later when asked for clarification said she heard about it on social media
hopfscotch2 6y ago
All police are liars.
pera 6y ago
FYI the Seattle Police Department retracted previous claims yesterday: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-area-protests-updates-for-thursday-june-11/#update-12846417 https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-area-prote... This is not the first time Chief Best and the SPD made things up during these events, and in fact they have a long history of misbehavior: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/12/16/spd_findletter_12-16-11.pdf https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/... Note that in your video Best is not being too explicit on where exactly those crime reports happened, she just says "in the area" while talking about their response times (CHAZ is a relatively important intersection of Capitol Hill and it is causing some traffic). Note also that this video was filmed in the East Precinct itself (i.e. inside CHAZ). After everything that happened over the last few weeks it is now my belief that they are being dishonest, which is why two days ago I submitted my first FOIA request to learn more about some events connected to the Seattle Police Department. By the way, I don't think many people here in Seattle believes this is an "utopia" nor anything close to that, in fact I think that CHAZ may be moving away attention from BLM.
- rideontime 6y ago
  Note that Andy Ngo himself, author of the tweet linked in the grandparent, helped spread the false claims that SPD has retracted: https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1270820367573999616 https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1270820367573999616
  - dmix 6y ago
    He was quoting the police chief in the video? Doesn't seem very malicious to me.
    - rideontime 6y ago
      He refers to his "sources" right in this tweet, which predates the police statement.
      - 6y ago
loeg 6y ago
Yeah, that is flat-out misinformation. The SPD has been lying left and right.
rideontime 6y ago
The only available public data[0] contradicts this statement by the police chief. The truth doesn't matter, of course; the linked video has been seen over one million times and will continue to be spread, on HN and elsewhere. [0] https://twitter.com/spekulation/status/1271631384025554944 https://twitter.com/spekulation/status/1271631384025554944
CydeWeys 6y ago
One of the things you should be learning from these protests is that the police lie all the time, and are never held accountable for it. Look at how flagrantly the police lied to cover up what they did to Breonna Taylor, or Freddie Gray. This is their standard MO: Lie and cover-up.

pjc50 6y ago

She said that, but is it actually true? Besides, one of the long list of complaints is that police are often useless or worse at dealing with rapes; Minneapolis PD had a massive backlog of untested rape kits. (edit: correctly gendered the police chief, hadn't bothered looking at the tweet)

dgellow 6y ago
> He said that I'm quite sure she's a woman.
mcv 6y ago
Yeah, rape is a particularly lousy excuse considering the poor record many police departments have in addressing rape cases.
cwkoss 6y ago
In the past week SPD has lied about: - "Incendiary devices" being thrown at officers: it was a candle - as can be seen by the sticker visible in SPD's own tweets - Businesses being 'extorted': appears SPD leadership got a false report of this from a local alt-right personality and spread it in their press briefing. - People checking IDs for entry: streamers have been trying to find anyone on the ground who can substantiate this claim and have been unable to. A small handful of people have been kicked out by being swarmed by a crowd and told to leave (and some more colorful language) without violence. These few instances have all either been counter-protestors or people trying to be senselessly destructive, as far as I've seen. I'm skeptical of these most recent claims
- HeroOfAges 6y ago
  Why can't people counter protest?
  - noobaccount 6y ago
    They can. Public officials spreading damaging falsehoods may violate the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments. I believe that is the issue being discussed.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > A small handful of people have been kicked out by being swarmed by a crowd and told to leave (and some more colorful language) without violence. This sounds like at least an implicit threat of imminent violence, without disputing the rest of your description.

thatcat 6y ago

Chief later suggested building some sort of wall...

gnu8 6y ago

I would not expect the rate of rapes, robberies, and violent acts to drop to zero unless the area is completely depopulated. However, I think it is safe to assume that there are fewer instances occurring now that the police are excluded from the area.

lwheelock 6y ago
With what logic is it “safe to assume that”? Police presence ergo more rape?
- hopfscotch2 6y ago
  Yes. Where police go, violence follows.

mcv 6y ago

Wasn't it the police who abandoned this area in the first place? The impression I'm getting from this and other events from the past weeks is that the police would like us to believe that without them, society turns to chaos, but in practice, US police turns out to be a major source of chaos, and without them things often turn much more peaceful. I'm not saying there should be no police at all, but that police should work with the community, instead of trying to dominate it.

_-david-_ 6y ago
The police left because they were told to leave not because they wanted to leave.
- loeg 6y ago
  It is really not clear at this time why they left. Chief Best claims she did not order police to leave. SPD's organizational structure is such that the police report only to the police chief. However, it was clearly organized — police brought in a rented commercial truck and removed some belongings, and boarded up the outside.
  - downerending 6y ago
    It's somewhat telling that both the mayor and the police chief deny ordering the abandonment. Who the hell is running the city?
    - loeg 6y ago
      The open question is not about the city generally, but the police. "Who are the Seattle police accountable to?" And: good question. No one, apparently.
      - downerending 6y ago
        The question of why the Seattle police abandoned a precinct isn't really a question of who the police are accountable to. Clearly someone who feels that the police are a malign force ordered them to leave. Who had the power and did it? My guess is the mayor and/or the forces that pull her strings.

ogre_codes 6y ago

> Seattle police chief said on TV And the media didn't post a non-biased account of what's going on? It's become incredibly difficult to take what the PD says at face value anymore.

TheGrim999 6y ago
Whether or not the PD is biased is one thing, but it's kind of a joke if you're honestly suggesting that Seattle news media isn't also extremely biased and partisan.
- jyrkesh 6y ago
  While The Stranger is obviously pretty left-wing, KOMO, KIRO and MyNorthWest are pretty right-wing, actually. KOMO in particular did the Seattle is Dying[1] documentary that was ultimately pro law-enforcement (framing the homelessness debate largely as a problem with judges not sentencing detained criminals, leading to a reduction in arrests as police felt they were useless). Jason Rantz[2] gets a fair bit of publicity out here as well for his conservative coverage of this stuff. Now I'd say your statement about "extremely biased and partisan" is accurate, but the implication was that it's exclusively in a pro-protestor sense, and that's really not the case. I say this as someone who lives on the political fringes and generally disagrees with both sides of the partisanship. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw [2] https://mynorthwest.com/category/jason-rantz/ https://mynorthwest.com/category/jason-rantz/?
appleflaxen 6y ago
and the media

ilikehurdles 6y ago

> Seattle police chief But what did the CCP say? What's Trump's report of on-the-ground conditions?

rideontime 6y ago

How would she know?

iron0013 6y ago

How, after all the events of the last two weeks, is anyone still willing to take a police-person’s word as truth?

Fellshard 6y ago
Because some people are still rational enough to treat individuals on an individual basis.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  If that means people are taking the SPC's word as truth because they have priors she's generally truthful, that's sensible. If people are taking the SPC's word as truth because they have priors that cops are truthful, that's an invalid prior based on how much general lying recent events have demonstrated cops do. If people are taking SPC's word as truth because they have no priors, that's bias to authority and people should probably employ more skepticism. Do we have any evidence that the Seattle police chief is generally truthful?
  - Fellshard 6y ago
    That is a much better question.
  - loeg 6y ago
    > Do we have any evidence that the Seattle police chief is generally truthful? Chief Best has made multiple false statements of fact just this week, so, no.
- rideontime 6y ago
  And this particular individual has already had to walk back false statements: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-area-protests-updates-for-thursday-june-11/#update-12846417 https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-area-prote... > The Seattle Police Department walked back its claim, widely repeated in the news media, that denizens of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone are extorting businesses. > "That has not happened affirmatively," Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best in a news conference Thursday afternoon, adding that the police department had based earlier claims on anecdotal reports, including in the news and on social media. "We haven't had any formal reports of this occurring." > That contradicts earlier statements from the police.

hsod 6y ago

she also said they were extorting businesses and later when asked for clarification said she heard about it on social media

hopfscotch2 6y ago

All police are liars.

pera 6y ago

FYI the Seattle Police Department retracted previous claims yesterday: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-area-protests-updates-for-thursday-june-11/#update-12846417 https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-area-prote... This is not the first time Chief Best and the SPD made things up during these events, and in fact they have a long history of misbehavior: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/12/16/spd_findletter_12-16-11.pdf https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2011/... Note that in your video Best is not being too explicit on where exactly those crime reports happened, she just says "in the area" while talking about their response times (CHAZ is a relatively important intersection of Capitol Hill and it is causing some traffic). Note also that this video was filmed in the East Precinct itself (i.e. inside CHAZ). After everything that happened over the last few weeks it is now my belief that they are being dishonest, which is why two days ago I submitted my first FOIA request to learn more about some events connected to the Seattle Police Department. By the way, I don't think many people here in Seattle believes this is an "utopia" nor anything close to that, in fact I think that CHAZ may be moving away attention from BLM.

rideontime 6y ago
Note that Andy Ngo himself, author of the tweet linked in the grandparent, helped spread the false claims that SPD has retracted: https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1270820367573999616 https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1270820367573999616
- dmix 6y ago
  He was quoting the police chief in the video? Doesn't seem very malicious to me.
  - rideontime 6y ago
    He refers to his "sources" right in this tweet, which predates the police statement.
    - 6y ago

loeg 6y ago

Yeah, that is flat-out misinformation. The SPD has been lying left and right.

rideontime 6y ago

The only available public data[0] contradicts this statement by the police chief. The truth doesn't matter, of course; the linked video has been seen over one million times and will continue to be spread, on HN and elsewhere. [0] https://twitter.com/spekulation/status/1271631384025554944 https://twitter.com/spekulation/status/1271631384025554944

CydeWeys 6y ago

One of the things you should be learning from these protests is that the police lie all the time, and are never held accountable for it. Look at how flagrantly the police lied to cover up what they did to Breonna Taylor, or Freddie Gray. This is their standard MO: Lie and cover-up.