We didn't defund the police; Seattle PD took an 18% budget cut that was largely the result of declining to enlarge the department and moving some tasks, like parking enforcement, out to other departments. Also, SPD has something like 230 open positions for officers. That said, we would prefer that they not take the tack of "shoot first and dodge OPA later," if they wouldn't mind.

"Our prosecutors" is not the City of Seattle. The Seattle city attorney does not have the authority to prosecute anything above simple misdemeanors. It's up to the county who gets prosecuted and who doesn't, and King County has said that county policy is that you can't arrest people into better conditions.

> safe place again after the bad ol' days. And then we undid it in 24 months

Pardon? Are you really saying that downtown is less safe and less inviting than downtown in the 80s and 90s? You are aware that the waterfront largely did not exist back then, that violent crime in 98101 was almost six times its current amount back then? That the number of people living in downtown has rebounded from its COVID-induced trough and is now 4% higher than before?

I have lived through those "bad ol' days" and also the "good times" you mentioned and to say that downtown is undone and worse now than it was before, to quote an esteemed colleague, "is madness."