{"id":1505156,"date":"2022-06-06T12:05:56","date_gmt":"2022-06-06T16:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1505156"},"modified":"2022-06-06T12:06:14","modified_gmt":"2022-06-06T16:06:14","slug":"seattle-implodes-after-defunding-the-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/seattle-implodes-after-defunding-the-police\/","title":{"rendered":"Seattle Implodes After Defunding The Police"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">12<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fseattle-implodes-after-defunding-the-police%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1505156&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p class=\"p1\">Seattle\u2019s efforts to defund its police department and transfer some of its responsibilities to other city agencies resulted in $5 million worth of wrongful parking tickets and other administrative dysfunction, according to The Seattle Times.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2022\/03\/03\/liberal-city-three-homicides-seattle\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Seattle<\/a> is refunding roughly 100,000 parking tickets worth approximately $5 million total after transferring parking enforcement duties from police to civilian parking enforcement officers in the fall of 2021, finding that the civilian officers lacked the legal authority to write the tickets, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.seattletimes.com\/seattle-news\/politics\/seattles-botched-experiment-with-defund-the-police-now-could-mean-unwinding-10000-tows\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">according<\/a> to The Seattle Times. Parking officers also conducted more than 10,000 car tows and impounded 1,700 cars without the proper authority during this period.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen here is that we\u2019re going to get sued, I can guarantee it,\u201d said Chuck Labertew, president of Lincoln Towing, which has the sole contract for city-initiated towing, according to The Seattle Times. \u201cAnd I\u2019m going to forward every one of those lawsuits on over to the city.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The decision to remove this responsibility from police was part of a <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2020\/07\/10\/majority-seattle-city-council-backs-defunding-police\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">push<\/a> in 2020 to <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2020\/11\/24\/seattle-cuts-police-department-budget-invest-community-alternatives\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reduce<\/a> police funding and have civilians take on jobs typically handled by police, according to The Seattle Times. The City Council <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2020\/11\/24\/seattle-cuts-police-department-budget-invest-community-alternatives\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">cut<\/a> the police budget by 17% in 2020, far short of its 50% goal.<strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2022\/06\/03\/democrat-seattle-mayor-sex-assault-case-backlog\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">(RELATED: \u2018I\u2019m Not Happy\u2019: Democrat Mayor Bemoans Sex Assault Case Backlog)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The cost of the city\u2019s mistake may not be limited to the $5 million in refunded tickets: people will likely contest the tows and impounds authorized by the non-police parking authority, Labertew told The Seattle Times, but the city will not refund those tows automatically.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7444214\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\">\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-7444214\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A worker cleans off the word \u201cpeople\u201d graffitied over the word \u201cpolice\u201d at the Seattle Police Department\u2019s East Precinct as they retake the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) area, in Seattle, Washington, U.S. July 1, 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>On top of the $5 million parking ticket debacle, efforts to defund the police have limited law enforcement\u2019s ability to prosecute serious crimes: the Seattle Police Department is not investigating new sexual assault cases due to understaffing after more than 400 officers <a href=\"https:\/\/spdblotter.seattle.gov\/2022\/06\/02\/chief-diaz-statement-on-current-staffing-crisis\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">left<\/a> the force, according to The Seattle Times.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2022\/02\/17\/crime-shootings-seattle-democratic-mayor-bruce-harrell\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Crime<\/a> has soared in Seattle in recent years: the city saw a 95% increase in shots fired and a 171% increase in people being shot from 2021 to 2022, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.seattletimes.com\/seattle-news\/politics\/seattle-continues-to-go-backward-on-crime-as-much-as-30-years-back\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">according<\/a> to The Seattle Times. Seattle\u2019s violent crime rate, which had been steady for 30 years, suddenly jumped 20% in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>The Seattle City Council did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact <a href=\"mailto:licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org\">licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seattle\u2019s efforts to defund its police department and transfer some of its responsibilities to other city agencies resulted in $5 million worth of wrongful parking tickets and other administrative dysfunction,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1505156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1505156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1505156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1505156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1505156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}