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Comment by wannacboatmovie | Hacker News Reader

> If someone was actively stealing your car, and 911 told you they're an hour out, would that be acceptable?

In Seattle they don't even show up anymore, they tell you to fill out a form online...

You have to search the streets yourself and be your own advocate if you want to recover your stolen car.

In the last 8 years SPD has become completely unmotivated to do their job despite never having their budget cut. Adjacent police departments like Kirkland and Lake Forest Park are much more willing to do their job, but they fire officers who don't do their job, while SPD retains these caustic, non-performing officers.

So long as we let our officers in Seattle getaway with billing fraudulent hours that weren't worked, ignoring core job duties, and slow rolling the duties that they do do, we will be stuck with an ineffective police force.

>In the last 8 years SPD has become completely unmotivated to do their job despite never having their budget cut

The budget was absolutely cut.

https://apnews.com/article/business-police-seattle-6730ec66e...

>The Seattle City Council has approved a 2022 budget that cuts police department spending from previous years [...]

2022 was not 8 years ago.

I do not read "In the last 8 years" as 8 years ago, but within in the last 8 years. Do you read it differently?

In your interpretation the number 8 has no significance in that sentence, since "In the last 1000 years" would have the same meaning.

I could say the exact same thing for your interpretation. Why not just say 1000 years ago the budget wasn't cut? It would have the same meaning. Oh wait, it wouldn't have the same meaning because 8 and 1000 years are quite a bit different.

8 years is probably not meaningless for the poster. He probably moved there 8 years ago or had his car stolen back then and is saying nothing has improved since then despite there being no budget cuts.

It makes no sense to say in the last X years if the poser just mean X years ago. It would cause unnecessary confusion.

>I could say the exact same thing for your interpretation. Why not just say 1000 years ago the budget wasn't cut? It would have the same meaning.

Because it would not have the same meaning. The point of the phrasing is that the time the Seattle PD stopped being motivated to do their job was close to eight years ago, and they have continued to be unmotivated since then.

"1000 years ago the budget wasn't cut" does not convey that information.

If the poster meant 8 years ago they stopped being motivated he would have just said that. The post didn't say that. You are just tangling yourself in word play to try to get the post to mean something different than it does.

You’re parsing this incorrectly mate. “In the last 8 years” means in any of the last 8 years, which is different than in the last 1000 years.

The SPD has lost hundreds of officers and hasn't recouped them.

"Defund the Police" has consequences.

The SPD has lost officers, yes, despite offering hiring bonuses higher than ever. This is not because they don't have enough money, but because the prestige of being a police officer in Seattle has declined.

While defund the police was ill-though out, let's remember that it was a response to the continued use of excessive use of force by police. As one of the parent commenters said, SPD has a poor track record of disciplining misconduct of their officers. People will take increasingly desperate measures if they feel like they're not being heard. The idea that you'd do away with police was short sighted and didn't make sense since the beginning, but the situation SPD finds itself in is partially a self-inflicted wound.

The police chief is appointed by the mayor. If people feel like they are not being listened to or there is too much abuse maybe they should elect a mayor that will deal with it?

Yes and no. Traffic enforcement and dispatch positions were moved to another funding line item outside of the SPD. This was the city council attempting satisfy calls to "defund the police", while not actually reducing the amount of money allocated to policing.

https://southseattleemerald.com/2023/09/14/opinion-debunking...

"The new budget includes funds for 1,357 officers and SPD says right now, there are 1,120 officers on the force—which leaves 237 open jobs."

20 years ago in school our English teacher had us read a science fiction short story about a robbery. I wish I could remember the name of it. The essential idea was that robbery was at some point legalised and nobody really cared because they just claimed on insurance. With more and more of our possessions being basic commodities (cars, electronics, IKEA furniture etc.) and everything of importance being digital, this seems to be coming true now.

From very dim memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatlander_(short_story)

Anymore? They've never shown up for this kind of stuff as long as I can remember.

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