As I mentioned yesterday my Dynasty baseball team made it to the World Series for the first time this century and I looked forward to a hard fought world series against a Colorado team that like me had been two games away from missing the playoffs but had unlike me won 5 straight regular season and playoff game to make the series.
Alas for me that streak was extended to nine. All the games were close and in each game the tying run was either on base or on deck when the last out was made but the team just couldn’t manage to score the key runs. It seemed like every decision I made was the wrong one.
This sounds a lot like what has happened in Seattle Washington and Portland Oregon over the last two years except they don’t seem to be willing to note that they are in their current state due to their own bad decision on how to handle rioters and looters:
In the news section of the Seattle Times, for instance, a reader is unlikely to see any consideration of a link between policing and public safety. “No single cause for 2021’s surge in gunfire in Seattle,” declared a typical recent headline over an article that points only to possibilities such as the pandemic or an unlucky cycle of “retaliatory violence”. But the majority view in Seattle appears to have shifted toward an acknowledgement that the unrest and destruction that occurred after the killing of George Floyd in 2020 marked a turning point and that the city’s policies toward its police force, whose ranks are now depleted, are relevant to understanding the story.
But just as it’s considered improper by the elites to note that Lia Thomas has a distinct advantage when swimming against actual women it is not publicly said the city fathers, their papers or the left that the lack of consequences for bad behavior produces more of it.
On 1 June, Mike Magan and a colleague from the Seattle bomb unit entered the site to look for possible video footage. The first floor, he says, was destroyed. “All the jewellery cases had been smashed,” he says. “All the cosmetics were gone. All the makeup was gone. Shoes were gone — bags. Everything.” As for tracking down the looters, that wasn’t on the agenda. “We were told: you will not investigate any of those things,” Magan says. “The city attorney wouldn’t file charges on them.”
In the end officers have left enmase and no amount of incentives seem to bring them or replacements back:
Last October, as vaccine mandates caused even more officers to leave, the mayor put in place an emergency order offering $25,000 bonuses to new hires. But the mindset of the city seems to have mattered just as much to the officers in this story as financial considerations. “My young rockstar detectives are sniffing around these other departments where they’ll get treated like royalty,” Young says. “How do I compete with that?” The answer to that may depend on how much Seattle cares.
Meanwhile a few hundred miles south Portland is having the same problem with the same cause:
Beleaguered Mayor Ted Wheeler, who jumped on board the defund the police bandwagon back in 2020, has been trying to address both problem for the past year and so far he has very little to show for it. When it comes to violent crime, the city set a record for the number of shootings in 2021 and is currently on pace to surpass that record by double digits in 2022.
Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell said for 2022, there have been an average of nearly 29 shootings per week in Portland.
If this trend continues, Chief Lovell says there will be a little over 1,500 shootings this year, which is a 14% increase compared to last year and a 266% increase from 2019.
At the same press conference where Chief Lovell made that announcement, the mayor was asked why his efforts to combat violent crime didn’t seem to be working. Mayor Wheeler rambled for a bit and then mentioned the elephant in the room.
“I’m determined to see gun violence reduced in our community and obviously that would happen much faster if we had more officers,” Wheeler said. Later in response to another question he added, “Portland has a critical shortage of law enforcement personnel right now. We are in a 28-year low on a per capita basis.”
John Sexton notes that what was unsaid was much more important than what was:
No one is saying the words “defund the police” but that’s what this is about. That and another word Mayor Wheeler never wants to say, “Antifa.” Portland police spent months battling violent goons in the street and got nothing for it but more criticism and the threat of a class action lawsuit by the protesters.
A program initiated by the mayor to attract back retired officers had the same success rate as British Camel Spotters and drew caustic responses from those targeted for rehire insulted by the implication that they are at fault for leaving rather than the decision of the government to target the police rather than the mob:
Your letter states, “You left at a time of great despair for the Bureau and the City of Portland, 2020 became a perfect storm that thrust our Bureau and the City into a very dark period.” This sounds as if you feel that those who left, abandoned the city in her time of need, but in reality, it is the officers who were abandoned. The darkness, destruction and death to Portland was a result of your failed polices and the lack of leadership. The “perfect storm” of which you speak was the demonization of police by the Mayor’s office and City Council members, and the failure of PPB leadership to stand up to them in support of their own officers. Your letter mentions “considerable support from elected officials”. This is laughable. Portland has a Mayor who refuses to call out ANTIFA and condemn the riots, a DA who refuses to prosecute violent rioters and a Council Member who accuses police of committing the arsons and violence that were committed by the rioters.
This is an excellent example of cause and effect or more accurate the old saying that Democracy is the concept that the people should get what they want, good and hard.
As I said at the start of this piece like the leaders of Portland and Seattle my decisions led to my defeat, but unlike them I’ll be able to recover fairly quickly. It will be decades before either of these cities do, if ever.
At least there is one decision of mine that has stood the test of time. The decision of my wife and I not to move to Portland after we were married continues to be the best (non) move we have ever made.
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