Life Changes?

When COVID brought life to a halt for most people, police officers just kept working.  Life as (mostly) usual.  Then after the death of George Floyd, things got really intense.  And then the extremely liberal Seattle City Council decided to vote on a resolution to take decisive action--show their desire for social change by cutting the police department by 50%.  

Not, train up alternative people to handle 911 calls. 

Not, evaluate call load and response resources.

Not do some trials to see how it would feel to respond to the call load with a few less officers.  

Just straight up lay off 50% off the police in Seattle. 

They did not talk to the chief.  They didn't look at statistics.  They didn't work with the union.

They didn't look at the number of officers in Seattle vs. the number in comparable cities (we have the smallest force, by far, of any comparable city).

They didn't look at how things went in the CHOP zone (where several black lives were lost to violence) when police weren't allowed in.

And at first we assumed our lives wouldn't change, except that Derek's job would get much crazier, busier, and more dangerous.  

But then he found out that he is employee #890.  And the cuts will cut all higher than 700.  So, we may need to find a new job.  After 15 years.

And Seattle area won't be a safe place to live.

This was a HUGE shock to the system. 

We have never considered leaving.  

The vote is August 3rd.  So everything is sort of on hold until then...home improvement plans, decisions about what's next for us....even telling our kids about it.  We don't want to worry them.

But a tentative job search has started.

Would you want to work for a department where your city council are doing and saying things like this:

Chief Best's response was excellent.  Now we wait. 

https://komonews.com/news/local/chief-best-discusses-what-defunding-her-department-would-look-like