Yesterday the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran this local headline:
Police scramble to combat violenceOn a weekend when extra police patrols were added to one area of Seattle to curb violent crime, another rash of shootings, stabbings and brawls broke out in several other locations, confounding efforts to halt the rise in violent crime....
Last year, aggravated assaults involving a gun rose by 25 percent. This year, those same crimes are up 26 percent over last year just through the end of September, Kerlikowske said.
Imagine my surprise when I saw this one today:
U.S. poll ranks Seattle safest place to live
Despite a rising violent crime rate and a bloody weekend that left four people wounded in gunfire, many across the United States still consider Seattle one of the safer cities in the nation.[...]
Greg Nickels, Seattle's mayor, spins it this way: "while Seattle is certainly not free of crime and violence, this ranking is something everyone can take pride in." Of course the mayor is going to accentuate the positive and it would be out of character for a politician to fail to seize on something like this. But after a violent weekend following a violent summer at the very least you'd expect the mayor to acknowledge that Seattle has a growing problem.
He didn't, remaining in character as Mayor in a Bubble. For example, police staffing has remained flat since 1985. I know better than to blame this solely on the mayor. I'm new to Seattle and I'm still learning about the political climate and history but it seems like the ball was dropped or never even picked up in the 1980s as far as planning and adapting to a growing population. Nevertheless when crime is on the rise an alert city government at least makes noises about augmenting the police force. The latest plan I saw was to add six transit police to the force for next year.
It's hard to say why crime with guns is going up so fast here lately. Mayors from around the U.S. met last week to address the issue of illegal guns. But that's not going to keep guns out of the hands of people like Kyle Huff, who, in hindsight shouldn't have been able to keep a gun let alone an arsenal.
Poverty and homelessness are up for reasons I assume have something to do with a combination of globalization and decreased government funding for programs to combat poverty and homelessness, thanks to single-party rule in Washington DC. My church's food bank is busier than it has been in years, also courtesy of the GOP policies.
Seattle's got more problems than rising gun crimes -- housing is unaffordable, traffic is a nightmare, our roads and bridges are 30 years behind schedule for upgrades, our schools are closing and parents are up in arms about it, and the mayor wants a Big Dig type tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct which is a disaster waiting to happen. There is a permanent camp of homeless people under an exit ramp outside my window at work which is new this year. These problems aren't all due to a mayor in a bubble or bad planning. I can't even blame the republicans for everything. Ballot initiatives courtesy of Tim Eyman have resulted in decreased tax revenues available to Seattle. Did I mention republicans already? There's plenty of blame to go around.
The mayor has ignored the results of at least two polls this year, one asking which streets need attention most and the other asking to choose between alternatives for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct. I have no evidence but this mayor behaves like he is beholden to someone other than the people of Seattle.
I wanted to write about the Gallup crime poll and its tenuous relationship with reality because we're all crazy for polls right now. Yes this poll is different from the usual polls asking who people are going to vote for. On the other hand, evaluating candidates isn't much different from evaluating cities, and the issue of safety -- perceived safety -- is in everyone's minds when they think about the candidates. Short version: polls are fraught with error and even though they are scientific the people who provide data for them are loaded with subjectivity and bias courtesy of the mediaverse. Don't confuse the poll results with what's happening in the real world... especially if you're the mayor!
Keep your bullshit detectors on and recalibrate them regularly.